An FCC ruling allows telecom companies to cease support for analog communications, which means you won’t be able to rely on your fax machines or on-prem fax servers for much longer.
As a corporate IT professional, you probably have many valid reasons for wanting to finally dump your legacy fax infrastructure—from the hassles of troubleshooting paper jams to the high costs of renewing maintenance agreements.
But based on a federal regulation just updated in August 2022, if your company needs reliable and affordable faxing capability going forward, you’ll actually need to retire that legacy fax infrastructure—quickly—and replace it with something new.
What This Federal Ruling Means for You
For decades, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required telecommunications companies to offer their customers affordable analog communications using the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). However, with the ever-increasing availability and falling costs of digital services such as VoIP, millions of customers have migrated away from the POTS network on their own, making these services both more burdensome and less profitable for carriers.
In 2019, the FCC issued a ruling allowing these companies to retire their POTS infrastructure over a three-year transition period, which ended in August 2022. However, it’s important to note that “the Commission has not mandated the decommissioning of POTS lines. In FCC 19-72, adopted in August 2019, the Commission granted forbearance from two narrow regulatory obligations imposed on incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs). Specifically, the Commission granted forbearance relief to price cap LECs throughout their local service areas from the obligations to (1) make analog copper loops available to competitive LECs on an unbundled basis at TELRIC rates, and (2) offer for resale at wholesale rates any telecommunications service that the carrier provides at retail to subscribers who are not telecommunications carriers.”
This ruling does not mean that all POTS lines must be replaced with alternative services immediately, but it does signal a strong push towards digital communication methods. During the three-year transition period, competitive LECs were required to make alternative arrangements in the affected service areas. Now that the transition period has ended, it’s likely that your phone carrier is working to decommission these lines.
Why You Should Be Looking for a New Fax Solution Right Now
A word of warning. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky organizations whose phone carrier is behind on the FCC’s August 2022 transition deadline. Maybe your carrier hasn’t even begun the work of drawing down the POTS infrastructure that supports your analog fax lines. You should not treat your carrier’s delay as an opportunity to relax your own search for a more modern business-faxing alternative.
There are two important reasons for this. First, as your carrier migrates its resources away from supporting your POTS-enabled analog service, you should expect both the quality and reliability of service to deteriorate. Second, the longer it takes your carrier to fully eliminate its POTS infrastructure, the more likely it is that your costs for maintaining that outdated service will rise. After all, another key provision of the FCC’s ruling was to remove the price caps on what carriers are allowed to charge for POTS-enabled services.
The Smart, Easy Way to Migrate Your Fax Environment Away from POTS
So, while the FCC has not mandated the full shutdown of POTS communications, the regulatory environment has made it clear that reliance on these outdated systems is no longer viable. Even if your provider hasn’t yet decommissioned the POTS infrastructure supporting your faxing capabilities, they will likely do so soon—and from their perspective, the sooner, the better.
What do you do now? There is one extremely simple and cost-effective solution: switch to digital cloud fax. Moving your company to the right, enterprise-caliber cloud faxing solution will mean:
Your IT team won’t have any onsite hardware to administer or troubleshoot.
Your staff will be able to send, receive, view, edit, and sign faxes digitally from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Your company will have an affordable, pay-as-you-go fax solution that you can scale up—or down—as much and as often as you need.
You’ll save time and money by eliminating the time-consuming manual steps of legacy faxing—and replacing them with a streamlined digital platform that integrates seamlessly with your other workflow apps.
And, perhaps most important for our current conversation:
You’ll move your faxing environment from dependence on the near-obsolete POTS to a future-proof cloud-based communications platform currently serving literally millions of businesses’ daily faxing needs.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. law created to protect sensitive patient information from being disclosed without the patient’s consent. HIPAA mandates strict standards to handle Protected Health Information (PHI) and make sure medical records data is securely stored, transmitted and managed. Compliance is crucial for healthcare providers to maintain patient trust and avoid hefty fines.
According to The HIPAA Journal, in 2023, there were 26 breaches that involved over 1 million records each, with four of those breaches exceeding 8 million records.
Many industries use Dropbox, a popular cloud storage service, to share files and collaborate. In an era when healthcare relies heavily on digital tools, providers need to be sure their tools comply with HIPAA. Find out if Dropbox meets HIPAA standards and how you can use it securely within your medical practice.
Understanding HIPAA Compliance
Before we look closer at Dropbox HIPAA compliance, let’s dig deeper into the purpose of HIPAA and why it’s important in the healthcare industry. Compliance involves a set of regulations that protect the privacy and security of health information.
The key regulations include:
The Privacy Rule
The Security Rule
The Breach Notification Rule
The Privacy Rule governs the use and disclosure of PHI. The Security Rule sets the standards to safeguard electronic PHI. The Breach Notification rule requires covered entities (providers and facilities) to notify patients of data breaches.
Compliance with HIPAA helps make sure your patient data is handled responsibly to maintain confidentiality and prevent unauthorized access. To adhere to these regulations, you must implement physical, administrative and technical safeguards.
The standard Dropbox service does not include the necessary security features or administrative controls required by HIPAA. So, Dropbox, by default, is not automatically HIPAA compliant.
However, Dropbox Business and Dropbox Enterprise offer advanced security features that, when configured correctly, can support HIPAA compliance. In order to be compliant, Dropbox needs a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with your organization that outlines how it will protect electronic PHI (ePHI). Without a BAA, Dropbox can’t guarantee HIPAA compliance.
So, you need to carefully review Dropbox’s offerings and configure them according to the requirements you’re bound by.
3 Key Steps to Maintain HIPAA Compliance With Dropbox
If you’re set on using Dropbox to collaborate with your healthcare team, there are steps you can take to maintain HIPAA compliance:
Set up and configure your account properly
Manage access controls
Monitor and assess the risks
Now, let’s explore each of these steps a bit further.
1. Set Up and Configure Dropbox for Compliance
To make sure Dropbox aligns with HIPAA standards, start by choosing Dropbox Business or Enterprise. Again, these options offer more robust security features. Once you’re in, you can choose the settings that enhance security.
First, enable file encryption. Encryption protects your data, both during transmission and when stored, so that sensitive information remains secure.
Then, set up strong password policies — this helps prevent unauthorized access and reduces the risk of data breaches.
Finally, use two-factor authentication (2FA). Even if your passwords are stolen, 2FA adds an extra layer of security so it’s harder for attackers to compromise your account.
2. Manage Access Controls and Permissions
Make sure that only those who need access to ePHI can get to it. Limit access to ePHI in Dropbox by setting strict permissions and user roles. Only authorized personnel should have access to sensitive information, reducing the risk of unauthorized exposure or data breaches.
Regularly review and update access controls in Dropbox to ensure they align with your organization’s privacy policies and procedures — this practice helps maintain HIPAA compliance while adapting to changes within your team or organization.
3. Regularly Monitor and Assess Risks
Continuously monitor your Dropbox account for any suspicious activities. By keeping a close eye on account activity, you can quickly detect and respond to unauthorized access or unusual behavior. Implement regular risk assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities in your Dropbox setup and address them promptly.
Keeping detailed records of all security incidents and mitigation efforts is also crucial, as it demonstrates compliance during audits and helps ensure that your organization remains aligned with HIPAA requirements.
4 Best Practices to Meet HIPAA Compliance With Dropbox
When using Dropbox in a healthcare setting, safeguarding patient data is crucial to maintaining HIPAA compliance. Implementing these best practices can help protect sensitive information from breaches and unauthorized access.
Here’s how you can enhance the security of your Dropbox account to ensure it meets HIPAA standards.
1. Use Encryption
Ensure that files stored and shared through Dropbox are encrypted both in transit and at rest—This means your data is protected from unauthorized access while being uploaded, downloaded and stored. Encryption acts as a barrier, making it difficult for anyone without the correct decryption key to view sensitive information.
2. Enable 2FA
Add an extra layer of security to your account with 2FA. This method requires a second form of verification, such as a code sent to your phone, in addition to your password. When you enable 2FA, you reduce the risk of unauthorized logins, even if someone manages to steal your password.
3. Regularly Update Security Settings
Keep your security settings up to date and review them periodically. Cyber threats are constantly evolving, and outdated settings can leave your data vulnerable. Regular updates and security configuration reviews help you stay ahead of potential vulnerabilities and facilitate ongoing compliance with HIPAA.
4. Educate Your Team
Train your staff on HIPAA regulations and secure practices for using Dropbox. Knowledgeable employees are essential to prevent accidental breaches and make sure sensitive information is handled correctly. Regular training sessions can help your team stay informed about the latest security protocols and best practices to reinforce the importance of compliance.
How Can HIPAA Covered Entities Leverage Dropbox Securely?
Wrapping up, you can use Dropbox securely with the following practices:
Ensure that Dropbox provides a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) that outlines its responsibilities for protecting ePHI.
Set up Dropbox with all necessary security features, including encryption and access controls.
Regularly monitor Dropbox usage and conduct audits to ensure compliance with HIPAA requirements.
By following these steps, covered entities can leverage Dropbox to securely share documents while you maintain HIPAA compliance.
eFax Protect: A Secure, Affordable Alternative for HIPAA Compliant File Sharing
End-to-end encryption helps make sure your documents are encrypted during transmission and storage. Our BAA provides a formal agreement that outlines how we will protect your ePHI. And, secure document management enables you to store sensitive files without the need for physical fax machines.
Dropbox does not support faxing directly. To ensure HIPAA compliance, use a secure eFax service integrated with Dropbox.
Dropbox for Business can be configured for HIPAA compliance if you implement the necessary security measures and obtain a BAA.
Yes, Dropbox can be made HIPAA compliant by configuring security settings correctly and entering into a BAA with Dropbox.
Dropbox offers robust security features, but standard versions are not HIPAA compliant. For confidential files, use Dropbox Business or Enterprise with proper configurations and agreements.
Dropbox can be secure for medical records if you use Dropbox Business or Enterprise, configure the settings properly and have a BAA in place.
If you need to send a fax, and there’s a CVS nearby, it might seem like a convenient solution to walk in and use their fax machine. But, does CVS have fax services for the public? This article explores whether you can send a fax from a CVS location near you and lays out all of your options.
Does CVS Offer Fax Services?
CVS does not allow customers to send faxes from a CVS fax machine, not even medical-related documents. While many CVS locations have fax machines to receive prescription documents from doctors, these are reserved for internal communication.
Unless you are employed at CVS, you will not be able to use their fax machines.
Even though you can’t walk into your local CVS and send or receive a fax, you aren’t out of options. There are several places in most communities that will allow you to send a fax. Some of these potential alternatives to CVS fax services are:
The most cost-effective way to send a fax in person is at your local public library. Many libraries offer faxing either for free or at a low rate, usually between 10 to 50 cents per page.
However, most libraries only allow sending faxes to local or toll-free numbers and generally don’t accept incoming faxes. If you need to receive faxes, consider getting a local fax number for free.
2. Schools/Universities
If you’re a student or connected with a school or university, you can likely fax documents through your institution, especially for educational purposes. High school and college libraries, enrollment centers and financial aid offices often have fax machines available.
Faxing at a college library typically costs between $0.10 and $1.00 per page. Some institutions may offer flat fees, free services or secure cloud faxing for students and staff. Check with your school for the most accurate pricing and options.
3. Business Centers
Business centers often offer fax services, though they may be restricted to members. You can check out:
At these locations, you can typically expect to pay between $1.00 and $2.00 per page. Some stores might offer flat fees for a set number of pages or bulk discounts. Shipping centers often charge a minimum of $1 per page — with higher rates for long-distance or international faxes — potentially reaching up to $3 per page.
Note that these locations usually don’t accept incoming faxes. To receive faxes, consider an email-based service.
Why Use Online Services for Secure and Faster Faxing?
Online fax services offer a convenient, secure and efficient alternative to traditional fax machines.
To recap, does CVS have fax service? No. However, you have various alternatives, including public libraries, business centers and retail stores like Staples and FedEx. For a more modern approach, consider using eFax. It offers convenience, cost savings and enhanced security for all your faxing needs.
Yes, many CVS locations have fax machines that are used to receive prescriptions from doctors and transmit other internal, business communications.
No, aside from receiving prescriptions from doctors, CVS does not offer fax services to their customers, even for medical documents.
Some of the alternatives to CVS fax include public libraries, schools, business centers and various retail stores. You can also send and receive faxes online with an electronic fax service like eFax.
Yes, online fax services like eFax are secure and use encryption to protect your documents.
You can send almost all documents, including contracts, forms and personal paperwork through online fax services. If you use a secure online fax solution like eFax that encrypts fax transmission, you can even send sensitive communications including medical and legal documents.
The offices of the 1980s and 1990s were synonymous with the distinctive hum of fax machines, which enabled workers to share critical documents with clients and colleagues. Fax machines allow users to share a replica of a document with their contacts via a telephone line. However, as technology evolves, solutions like scan-to-fax bring it into the digital workplace.
The secure, instantaneous nature of faxing remains vital for businesses in regulated industries like government, healthcare, legal, and manufacturing. However, traditional fax machines are bulky, expensive, and time-consuming and don’t align with modern employees’ working practices. The machines are costly to purchase, maintain, and keep stocked with ink, toner, and paper, and are inconvenient for remote employees.
As a result, organizations are seeking convenient, modern alternatives that offer the secure, instantaneous benefits of faxing. One solution for this is scan-to-fax technology, which enables users to use their send and recevie faxes and send and receive faxes whenever and wherever they need to.
What is Scan To Fax?
Scan to fax is the process of scanning a document on a smartphone and then using an online fax solution to scan and fax from phone. This approach works the same way as online faxing; users scan documents using their phone camera, the app converts the photo into fax data, and users send a fax over the Internet. A good example of scan to fax technology could be a lawyer receiving a settlement in court. The lawyer can quickly sign the agreement, take a photo of the document, and immediately fax it to all parties without waiting until they return to their office to share the document.
5 Reasons to Use Scan and Fax for Seamless Document Sharing
Scan and fax solutions enable users to send and receive fax messages anytime and from anywhere. The benefits of using a scan to fax app include the following:
1. Convenient Messaging:Scan and fax from phone is a highly convenient approach for busy employees who don’t want to be constrained to their office desk. Scan to fax is crucial to encouraging modern working practices and allowing users to work from home, the office, an airport, a hotel, or a cafe. As a result, employees can be more productive, get more work done wherever they are, and share critical documents via fax anytime.
2. Environmentally Friendly: Traditional fax machines use significant amounts of energy and require businesses to get through reams of paper. Going paperless and removing the need for toner with scan fax technology helps businesses directly contribute to forest conservation. They can also reduce wastage, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy usage and cut the carbon emissions associated with physical document sharing.
3. Secure Data Sharing: People often need to share data as soon as they receive it, which has been simplified by digital collaboration tools, email, and instant messaging. However, these tools are vulnerable to cyberattacks and the spread of malware and viruses. Online faxing is more difficult for hackers to infiltrate, making scan and fax a more secure process for organizations to share critical documents and sensitive data.
4. Cost Savings: Traditional faxing can also be costly, with businesses not only having to purchase physical machines but also keeping them stocked with ink, paper, and toner. There may also be additional running costs like regular maintenance, fixing machine errors, or purchasing software updates. Additionally, enabling users to securely scan to fax from their phones saves the cost of traveling to the office just to send a fax.
5. User-Friendly: Scan to fax technology simplifies daily activities for employees. Users are now accustomed to quickly sharing information via email or instant chat tools. Scan and fax capabilities enable businesses to provide a secure, user-friendly solution that their employees love.
How to Effortlessly Scan and Fax Documents on Your Mobile Phone?
Users can easily scan and fax critical documents using their mobile phones, allowing them to share data via fax at any time. To discover how to scan and fax follow these five steps:
1. Download the eFax app on your smartphone
The first step in the how to scan to fax process is to download the eFax mobile phone app from the Apple Store or Google Play Store. The eFax app is free to download, but you must create an account and sign up for an eFax plan to use the service.
2. Select the fax number you want to send to
To send a message via a scan fax service, the first step is to select your recipient. Before writing a fax message in eFax, either fill in the fax number you want to send messages to or select a contact from your phone’s contact list.
3. Write your cover letter
A scan to fax app message is fronted by a cover page that acts as a letter to your recipient. The eFax enables you to add a cover page that should provide the recipient with information like who the sender is, including their name, email address, phone number, and information about the fax message’s contents.
4. Scan your document
The next step is to scan the document you want to send to your recipient. Use the camera on your smartphone or tablet to take a photo of the document, and then open the eFax app to attach the file to your fax message. You can also attach existing documents from third-party services like cloud storage platforms and email accounts.
5. Edit the fax message
The next editing step is to put the final touches to the fax file and add your signature to the document, if it’s not been signed physically. You can store a digital signature in the eFax app, making it easy to attach it to all future sent faxes.
6. Send your scan fax
After completing the above steps, it’s time to send the fax to your recipient. Select the “Send” button, and the fax will be sent immediately to the specified fax number or contact. Sent messages are stored in your eFax account for future reference.
4 Best Practices For Simplified Scanning and Faxing
Scan and fax solutions make it easy to securely share critical documents and sensitive data. However, it’s vital to ensure employees use the service correctly and efficiently. Here are a few best practices to simply scan to fax free services:
1. Turn off the camera flash: Ensure the photo of your document is clear and eligible for your contact. The camera flash can cause the image to be too bright, preventing your recipient from reading the document. So turn the flash off and ensure you take the photo with decent lighting to make the image as clear as possible.
2. Position the document correctly: You must also ensure the whole document is visible to your contact. So position the entire document within the camera’s frame before sending it via scan and fax.
3. Hold the camera steady: Slight movements when scanning your document can create blurry images, especially when taking a photo in low lighting. Try holding the camera with two hands to get the picture as accurate as possible and minimize movement.
4. Check camera phone settings: Before scanning a photo using your smartphone, check the camera settings to ensure the scan is as clear as possible. If your phone has them, select the ‘macro’ or ‘document’ modes and the autofocus setting to capture the image correctly.
How to Choose the Right Scan-to-Fax App?
When it comes to choosing the right scan-to-fax solution, there are a few things in particular that you should look for.
Security: While you may fax less sensitive or private faxes from time to time, many faxes contain information that you need to keep secure. A fax solution with built in security will allow you to send and receive faxes without worrying about putting you, your family, or your clients’ information at risk.
Cloud integration: If you know that you’ll be sending or saving faxes from other cloud-based apps, or if you need to use your fax service on various devices and from different locations, cloud integrtion will make this much simpler. You can access your files from anywhere, and send faxes when you need to, without worrying about returning to your office each time that you need to send a fax.
Ease of use: An easy-to-use interface can make your work day much easier as well. Many fax solutions are complicated to learn, slowing down the process. But a simple interface will save you time and stress.
Pricing: Balance the features that you need and the benefits of the faxing solution that you’re considering against the monthly or annual cost of the service to find an option that fits your needs and budget.
Closing Thoughts: Embracing the Convenience of Fax to Scan
Scan to fax services offer a wide range of benefits for both businesses and their employees. It allows the increasingly mobile workforce to securely send and receive documents on the go, whenever and wherever they work from. Adopting scan to fax technology into your communications process allows your business to cut costs, encourage efficient workflows, and go paperless while reducing emissions.
Streamline Document Workflows with eFax’s Scan and Fax Technology
eFax makes it easy for employees to quickly scan and fax documents to their colleagues, contacts, and clients. eFax’s industry-leading solutions enable you to streamline workflows by helping users securely send and receive critical documents whenever and wherever they are. The solution allows users to access faxes via email or cloud solutions and create and attach digital signatures on any device. eFax is ideal for large enterprises in regulated industries as the digital fax solutions include security features consistent with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act compliance.
Discover how eFax’s scan and fax services can help you reduce costs and enhance efficiency by signing up now.
FAQ’s Around Scan to Fax
Start by scanning the document that you need to send. Using your phone or a dedicated scanner, start by scanning your document. Upload it to the eFax app on your smartphone or directly to the website. Can you scan to a fax number? Yes, although you can also send a fax to an email address. At this stage, enter the recipient’s fax number or email, then hit send.
Yes, scan and fax solutions are available on any smartphone. To get started, simply download the eFax app from your app store.
Yes, documents can be scanned using your smartphone camera and then sent to a fax number through the eFax app.
Scan and fax from phone is highly secure. The eFax app complies with data privacy laws and industry regulations, such as HIPAA, making it ideal for sending critical documents and sensitive data to colleagues and clients.
The eFax scan to fax app enables you to attach multiple scanned pages or documents to any sent fax message.
Scan and fax starts by using the camera app on your smartphone to take a picture of your document. You can then use the eFax scan to fax app to write your message, attach documents, and send your fax message to contacts.
To scan a document on your computer or laptop is simple, if you have built-in scanning software or you have signed up with a third-party fax solutions provider. If not, you’ll need to attach a remote scanner to your laptop then get your document ready. Scan your document using your scanner, open the eFax website, and log in. Upload the document that you want to scan to the site. Enter the recipient’s fax number, then hit send.
The traditional analog fax machine is obsolete nowadays. First, it was replaced by computer fax lines, and then finally, by digital fax services that use apps on internet-connected devices to send and receive faxes. The modern way of faxing is cheaper, more efficient, more convenient and more reliable — not to mention more environmentally friendly than the faxes of old.
Just as fax machines have evolved, so has the way we use the internet. Now, our smartphone is the most commonly used portal to the internet. Faxing has moved to cell phones, too, and in this article, we’ll explore the convenience of using the iPhone’s Notes app for faxing.
Requirements for Sending Fax From Notes App in iPhone
In the old days, you’d need a dedicated landline, a clunky machine, fax paper, toner and a lot of time to send a fax. Sending a fax from your iPhone using Notes takes a lot less resource. Here’s all you need to send a fax from your iPhone:
The Notes app
A reliable internet connection
An online fax service account or third-party iOS fax apps from the App Store
How To Send a Fax From iPhone Note?
The Notes app is a great tool for saving documents that you can then fax using a digital fax solution like eFax.
You simply open or compose your document in the Notes app and then scan it to create a Notes app file. Notes lets you edit your scanned document and choose things like the color, including back and white or grayscale and even choose the format.
When you’ve finished adjusting and editing your document, you can hit “Done” and save your Note. At that point, it’s just like any other fax-ready document on your phone, and you can send it using an online fax app for your iPhone.
Within Notes, press and hold the screen, then select “Scan Document” to start the process.
2. Save your document in the photo gallery
Select the document you want to scan and take its photos. This will save it in the gallery.
3. Open eFax
Open your eFax app and select “Compose a Fax”.
4. Write your fax
Select your saved Note document to attach it as a fax. Then, add a cover page. You can even sign documents within the app.
5. Send your fax
Send your app right from the eFax app. Your sent documents will be saved in your eFax portal to review afterward so you know your documents were sent and even when they were received on the other end.
3 Best Practices for Using Notes App To Send Faxes
There are some key tips that make sending faxes using the iPhone Notes app more convenient and effective. Here are three best practices:
Label your saved documents clearly so you can track them afterward.
Use a cover page that clearly identifies your intended recipient and the number of pages you’re sending so that the person who gets your fax knows they have it all.
Only send faxes to trusted numbers, and make sure any sensitive or private data is secured.
eFax: The Simple & Efficient Way to Fax from Your iPhone
The eFax online fax system is the most reliable and efficient way to send faxes from your iPhone. We’ve developed eFax over decades to suit a wide range of industries and use cases. Benefits of eFax’s digital fax solution include:
Reliable cloud storage: eFax stores the faxes you send and receive in your secure, cloud-based storage platform.
Enhanced document management: Users can retrieve, search and organize faxes via your eFax digital fax portal. You can even tag them to make them easier to find and retrieve afterward.
HIPAA compliance: eFax is fully compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects sensitive medical information transmitted online. In fact, eFax is compliant with a wide range of privacy and data management regulations for industries like law, medicine, accounting, finance and more.
Integration into existing workflows: It doesn’t matter which smartphone apps or desktop systems you use — eFax makes it easy to send and receive faxes without using different devices or swapping back and forth between systems.
FAQ’s Around Faxing From Notes on iPhone
You can’t send faxes directly from the Notes app as it doesn’t allow faxing. However, Notes is a great way to write a fax using your Apple iPhone. Users can quickly and easily save these Notes to PDF or image files and attach those images as a fax using the eFax digital faxing app.
Because you can’t send faxes using the Notes app itself, you will need a third-party fax solution. An app is one solution, but you can also send a fax using Notes files by logging into your eFax online account using a web browser like Safari or Chrome.
Almost any digital fax service will allow you to upload a PDF or image file and send it as a fax document. Simply scan your Notes document as a PDF using the app and then retrieve it from your photo folder. eFax is a reliable fax solution that’s compatible with a wide variety of apps, including Notes, and file types, including:
PDF
MS Word documents
Jpeg or other image files
Yes, you can scan multiple pages to PDF using the Notes app on your iPhone. From there, it’s easy to attach this multi-page document as a fax using the eFax online fax app and send it in a single fax. With online faxing, you can send large faxes with many pages or even large files as a single fax to any recipient.
There’s no direct cost for saving a document using the Notes app. You can find free fax apps online. However, these are often less reliable and secure than a dedicated online fax service like eFax. To make sure your data is secure, it’s best to use a paid digital fax account from a reputable service.
Choosing the right eFax subscription level is easy, and depending on your plan, you can send multiple faxes using Notes at no extra cost.
Secure communication is mission-critical for organizations across the healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations must comply with stringent regulatory requirements like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to remove the risk of data loss and theft and limit the success of cybercrime.
Central to secure communication in healthcare are Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems, which are cost-efficient, offer rich flexibility and mobility features, and can sync with laptops, tablets, smartphones, other software applications, and traditional phone systems. Complying with regulations means deploying secure communication processes and tools like HIPAA-compliant VoIP services. VoIP HIPAA compliant companies are better equipped to securely store patient data while enjoying better-connected systems.
What is HIPAA Compliant VoIP
HIPAA was introduced into American law in August 1996 to secure the transfer of healthcare information and protect personally identifiable information (PII) against fraud and theft. The regulation seeks to prevent healthcare providers from disclosing sensitive or protected data with anyone other than their patients without their consent. Companies that breach HIPAA regulations face significant penalties and even the risk of prison time.
HIPAA ensures organizations protect the privacy and security of patients’ electronic and physical data. It also includes data transmitted via voice calls, which makes HIPAA compliance critical to healthcare providers using VoIP systems.
VoIP, also referred to as IP telephony, is a technology that delivers voice communication over IP networks, most commonly the Internet, rather than traditional phone lines. Some VoIP services only work on computers or specialized VoIP phones; others enable users to use a conventional telephone connected to a VoIP adapter. A VoIP system converts a user’s voice into a digital signal, allowing it to be transmitted across the Internet.
A HIPAA-compliant VoIP phone system meets the requirements set out by the regulation. This includes safeguarding patient data and complying with privacy and security rules around protecting PII. HIPAA compliance is critical across healthcare areas like:
Healthcare providers: All organizations that deliver healthcare services, including clinics, dentists, doctors’ surgeries and hospitals, must comply with HIPAA regulations.
Health plans: Any company that provides or pays for health coverage, such as health insurance firms and health maintenance organizations, is also bound by HIPAA rules.
Healthcare processors: HIPAA compliance is non-negotiable for any organization that processes healthcare data, such as claims processing. It’s also applicable to any organization with access to patient information, and organizations must provide secure communication channels for business associates, such as HIPAA-compliant VoIP.
Importance of HIPAA Compliance in VoIP Systems
Traditional phone lines are often vulnerable to data loss and snooping, which can risk the exposure of confidential health data and patients’ protected health information (PHI). Protecting patient privacy is, therefore, paramount to organizations across the healthcare industry. A HIPAA compliant phone system is critical to ensuring this, helping companies comply with stringent regulations that safeguard sensitive medical data.
A HIPAA compliant phone service for therapists and other medical professionals eliminates the risk of data loss by providing a secure tunnel for transmitting sensitive data. It helps healthcare providers by protecting data, safeguarding them from severe penalties and criminal action, and encouraging stronger patient relationships built around privacy and trust.
4 Benefits of Using HIPAA Compliant VoIP Solutions
HIPAA compliant VoIP solutions provide a wide range of benefits for healthcare organizations. The benefits include:
Enhanced Patient Privacy: A HIPAA compliant VoIP service ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive medical data. This minimizes the risk of data breaches and establishes patient trust.
Avoiding Fines: Failing to comply with the rules set out by the HIPAA regulation can result in severe fines and the risk of prison time. Implementing a HIPAA VoIP system ensures healthcare providers establish the required security standards across their communication processes. It also protects practices and healthcare professionals against the risk of financial penalties.
Improved Communication: One of the biggest benefits of a HIPAA-compliant VoIP service is it unlocks advanced communication tools. A HIPAA VoIP system provides secure call capabilities alongside additional features like secure file sharing, instant messaging and video conferencing. These secure communication tools make it easy for users to comply with HIPAA guidelines, ensuring seamless collaboration between healthcare providers’ employees and across their disparate branches, clinics and offices.
Loyalty and Reputation Boosts: Besides the risk of fines and prison sentences, failing HIPAA compliance also risks significant reputational damage. A HIPAA compliant VoIP solution demonstrates healthcare providers’ commitment to patient privacy, which in turn earns trust from existing users and can attract new patients to a practice. Trust is critical to success in the healthcare industry, so a secure VoIP HIPAA compliant service can set a provider apart from its competitors.
4 Critical HIPAA Requirements for Secure VoIP Communication
HIPAA-compliant VoIP services help healthcare providers comply with the regulation’s Privacy Rule and Security Rule. The Privacy Rule governs how healthcare providers can use and disclose PHI and emphasizes patient control over their health data. Healthcare providers must gain written authorization from patients before they use or disclose PHI.
The Security Rule ensures healthcare providers safeguard electronic PHI (ePHI). Under the rule, providers must ensure robust security measures are in place to protect ePHI from unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, disruption, modification and use. The Security Rule also outlines four critical requirements under which providers must protect ePHI during VoIP communication.
Data Encryption: Any conversation occurring through VoIP systems, such as chat messaging and calls, that contains PHI must be encrypted through protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Encryption scrambles data so that any bad actor that intercepts data during transmission can’t make sense of it. As a result, it’s virtually impossible for unauthorized people to access sensitive data.
Access Controls: Healthcare providers must ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data, such as PHI and VoIP systems. The Security Rule requires healthcare providers to utilize the principle of “need-to-know,” ensuring only employees responsible for patient care and treatment can access sensitive data. Additionally, multi-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security, requiring employees to prove their identity beyond simply using a password or code.
Audit Trails: Healthcare providers must maintain a detailed log of all communication through their HIPAA compliant VoIP systems. These audit trails must include data like call duration, the content of messages, the people and organizations involved in the communication and timestamps of conversations. Logging this data is crucial to detailed record-keeping, enabling providers to reconstruct communication history and identify potential security issues.
Data Backup and Disaster Recovery: Health organizations must implement contingency plans to guarantee the availability and integrity of ePHI. This process is critical to protecting sensitive data in the event of system failures, natural disasters, and other emergencies that could leave systems vulnerable to hacking. It also includes regular data backups and restoring communications systems as quickly as possible.
How to Choose a HIPAA Compliant VoIP System?
Healthcare communications typically involve the use of highly sensitive patient data. So using a reliable, robust and secure HIPAA compliant VoIP system is critical to protecting this information. Leading HIPAA-compliant VoIP providers offer solutions explicitly designed to meet the needs of healthcare providers. It’s therefore vital to research the market and identify providers that offer the following:
Business Associate Agreement: A Business Associate Agreement (BAA) provides a legally binding contract between healthcare organizations and their technology providers, such as VoIP providers. The BAA outlines each party’s responsibility around the privacy and security of PHI, so it’s vital to ensure the VoIP provider offers a BAA that aligns with your organization’s requirements.
Security Features: Considering the importance of protecting PHI and patient data, it’s critical only to consider VoIP providers that offer robust security features. More specifically, your chosen VoIP provider must also have security features tailored to HIPAA compliance.
Compliance Expertise: In addition to security features, it’s also vital to only work with VoIP providers with expertise and experience working with healthcare organizations. The VoIP provider must have deep knowledge of the best practices and latest regulations affecting healthcare firms and the tools and processes they require to guarantee HIPAA compliance.
Customer Support: Healthcare providers must select VoIP providers that offer reliable and responsive customer support. Look for providers with a dedicated support team that can solve any issues you have, answer any employee questions, and demonstrate knowledge of HIPAA compliance and their tool’s functionality regarding the regulation.
Flexibility and Scalability: Your current communications requirements will unlikely remain the same in the next 12 months and beyond. Therefore, you need a VoIP provider that’s flexible enough to align with your evolving needs and has the technological capabilities to scale as your business grows. It’s also important to consider how well the VoIP tool will integrate with your existing infrastructure and solutions and whether its implementation may cause any functionality and compliance problems.
Costs: Cost is a factor in any technology solution decision. However, cost shouldn’t be prioritized over privacy and security when implementing the best HIPAA compliant VoIP solution. The likelihood is that cheaper VoIP products are less likely to be HIPAA compliant, which could cost your business more in fines and reputational damage in the long run. So think carefully before prioritizing the cost of a HIPAA compliant VoIP.
Reputation: Selecting a HIPAA compliant phone system is critical to maintaining data security and protecting patient data. Therefore, your chosen HIPAA compliant VoIP provider’s reputation must be a key priority. Ensure the provider has a track history of working with reputable healthcare providers and avoid solutions marketed for general business use, which may not provide the required level of privacy security controls.
eFax Protect and HIPAA Compliant VoIP: A Perfect Pair for Protected Healthcare Communication
eFax Protect, our leading enterprise cloud fax solution, enables healthcare providers to seamlessly integrate their fax and VoIP communications to ensure HIPAA compliance. Aligning our online fax services with HIPAA compliant VoIP solutions enables healthcare organizations to protect all patient data and enhance the overall efficiency and security of their communications processes.
eFax is transforming fax capabilities by enhancing productivity and building data ecosystems that expand as healthcare organizations’ needs grow and evolve. The benefits of eFax include:
Enterprise-Level Security:eFax Protect’s online fax solutions rely on multiple layers of encryption, including 256-bit AES, TLS and SSL protocols, to secure fax communication when data is at rest and in transit. Additional security features like access control and authentication make eFax crucial for organizations in the highly regulated healthcare industry. This enterprise-grade security is why over half of Fortune 500 companies choose eFax’s online fax services.
Clear Audit Trails: eFax Protect easily integrates with third-party storage solutions and other technology, such as VoIP tools. Using eFax, healthcare organizations can guarantee their files are where they need them and when they need them and only authorized employees can access data.
Cost Control: eFax Protect’s flexible plans and feature-rich platform enable healthcare providers to enjoy efficient and seamless faxing without paying over the odds. eFax’s online faxing services eliminate the need for cumbersome, expensive fax machines, which must also be maintained and topped up with supplies of ink, paper and toner. Our service also eliminates hidden fees and unexpected charges, providing transparency to ensure budget-friendly experiences.
Flexibility: eFax Protect is designed to seamlessly integrate with multiple systems and applications, allowing seamless faxing on any platform. This provides healthcare organizations with the flexibility to enhance their communication processes. For example, many file-sharing providers limit the size of documents that users can send, but eFax provides a simple and efficient solution for sharing large files. eFax also enables users to send and receive faxes directly from their email inbox and on any device, from laptops to smartphones and tablets, helping businesses to streamline their communications.
Making the Right Choice for HIPAA Compliant VoIP
Healthcare providers must make the right choice when implementing new technology solutions, including selecting a HIPAA compliant VoIP. Working with a HIPAA compliant VoIP provider can be the difference between secure communications processes that protect patient information at all times and suffering costly and damaging data loss and cybercrime incidents.
It’s therefore crucial for healthcare providers to proactively evaluate HIPAA-compliant VoIP providers before committing to a product. Integrating a VoIP solution with eFax’s industry-leading online fax capabilities helps organizations safeguard their data when it’s in rest on various storage platforms and when being shared with trusted patients and colleagues.
FAQs Around HIPAA Compliant VoIP
Not all VoIP faxing complies with mandatory regulations like HIPAA. It’s crucial to work with HIPAA compliant online fax providers like eFax.
Healthcare organizations must diligently investigate VoIP faxing providers’ credentials to ensure they are VoIP HIPAA compliant. You can ensure your VoIP system is HIPAA compliant by implementing a solution that includes features like access controls, audit trail logs, data encryption, data backup and disaster recovery.
A VoIP system that doesn’t comply with HIPAA rules puts your healthcare company at risk of data loss and being hacked by cybercriminals. Losing sensitive patient health information can lead to healthcare providers being issued severe penalties, facing prison time and suffering irreparable reputation damage.
When choosing a HIPAA compliant phone system, look for VoIP providers that provide a detailed Business Associate Agreement and offer robust security features and compliance expertise. It’s also vital to work with companies that have reliable, responsive and knowledgeable customer support and the flexibility and scalability to meet your evolving requirements.
Yes, HIPAA-compliant VoIP systems can and should integrate with other healthcare technologies. Healthcare firms should actively look for a HIPAA-compliant VoIP service that works with their existing solutions and integrates seamlessly with their technology infrastructure stack.
Did you try to fax with Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, only to hit a roadblock? If so, you’re not alone. Many users rely on Adobe’s robust tools to manage PDFs and expect an intuitive option to send an Adobe scan fax. But, when they try to fax from their dashboards, they’re left scratching their heads. The good news is, there’s a straightforward solution that works seamlessly with Adobe.
You can send an Adobe fax without complicated configurations or expensive hardware—This article will show you exactly how to fax from Adobe and answer some common questions.
Does Adobe Have a Fax Service?
No, Adobe does not offer a built-in fax service. Adobe is known for its software products like Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader, which are used to create, view, manage and sign PDF documents. While these tools are excellent for handling digital documents, they do not include faxing capabilities.
Adobe did purchase EchoSign, an electronic signatures platform that has been recommended for signing and sharing documents from within the Adobe platform.
Adobe EchoSign, now known as Adobe Acrobat Sign, is primarily used for electronic signatures and document sharing, not to send traditional faxes. Using Adobe Acrobat Sign, you can send documents through Adobe. While it facilitates file sharing and collaboration, if you need to send a fax, you would need a dedicated fax service.
You can send a fax from Adobe using a dedicated fax service like eFax. Adobe itself does not have built-in faxing capabilities, but with eFax, you can easily send faxes from Adobe products like Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader.
Essentially, eFax becomes your Adobe fax service—This solution simplifies the faxing process and allows you to upload your PDF files and send them to traditional fax machines or online fax numbers.
There are a few things you’ll need before you can send a fax. Make sure your system is using the latest version of Adobe. Then, you’ll need to gather the documents that you want to fax and ensure they’re in the right Adobe PDF format you intend to send through as a fax. You may also need to combine multiple PDFs into one document.
Adobe doesn’t have built-in faxing, so you will need an online fax service like eFax, and you’ll need to install the eFax app on your machine. This will allow you to print directly to eFax from inside Adobe when you’re viewing your PDF. Just click File and Print, then select your digital fax service as the printer.
1. How to Fax From Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe Acrobat
Sending a fax directly from Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe Acrobat can streamline your document transmission process. Here’s how you can fax directly from these Adobe products using eFax.
Open your PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe Acrobat.
Ensure your document is ready to send as a fax.
Sign up for an eFax account if you haven’t already.
Click on “File” and then “Print” within Adobe Acrobat.
Select “eFax” as your printer option.
Click “Print” and follow the prompts to upload and send your fax.
With these steps, you can seamlessly fax documents from Adobe Acrobat Pro or Adobe Acrobat using eFax, enhancing your document management capabilities.
Faxing documents generated with Adobe Scan can be efficient and convenient. Here’s how to send an Adobe Scan fax with eFax.
Scan your document using Adobe Scan on your mobile device.
Save the scanned document as a PDF.
Sign up for an eFax account if needed.
Open the eFax app on your mobile device or visit the eFax website.
Upload the scanned PDF document.
Enter the recipient’s fax number and send your fax.
Utilizing Adobe Scan along with eFax enables you to seamlessly fax documents from your mobile device, combining scanning and faxing capabilities in one efficient workflow.
Faxing directly from your iPhone using Adobe PDFs can be convenient for on-the-go document transmission. Here’s a step-by-step guide to fax from your iPhone.
Locate the Adobe PDF document you wish to fax—You can access it from your email, cloud storage or any app that supports file sharing.
Tap on the share icon within the Adobe PDF viewer or file management app, and select “Open in eFax” or “Send to eFax” option.
Sign in to your eFax account using the eFax Mobile App.
Once signed in, the eFax Mobile App will prompt you to upload the PDF document.
Enter the recipient’s fax number directly within the eFax Mobile App.
Tap on the “Send” button within the eFax Mobile App to transmit your fax.
With these straightforward steps, you can easily fax Adobe PDF documents directly from your iPhone using the eFax mobile app to ensure efficient document transmission wherever you are.
eFax offers seamless use with Adobe documents, which makes it easy to send Adobe PDFs as faxes. Its user-friendly interface ensures a smooth experience, which enables you to upload your documents and enter recipient fax numbers with ease.
Moreover, eFax provides a reliable solution for all faxing needs to ensure that documents are transmitted securely and efficiently to traditional fax machines or other fax numbers. Plus, eFax is HIPAA, HiTrust and BAA compliant, so you can even use it to send sensitive documents.
Whether you’re using Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader or Adobe Scan, eFax will improve your document management capabilities with its dependable faxing service.
No, Adobe Acrobat does not support sending faxes through email. It focuses on PDF creation and editing, not faxing. You will need to use an online fax service like eFax to send faxes via email.
No, Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop or Illustrator do not have faxing capabilities. A third-party fax service like eFax is required for Adobe faxing needs.
No, Adobe mobile apps such as Adobe Scan or Adobe Acrobat Reader do not support faxing. Use an online fax service like eFax, which offers mobile apps for faxing directly from your device.
While there’s no Adobe fax solution built into the software, you can fax from Adobe by using a third-party digital fax service like eFax. When you choose your internet fax service from the list of printers within Adobe, it will automatically open your fax app to send your Adobe PDF as a fax.
Adobe doesn’t offer a fax add-on for users. However, there are many third-party digital fax solutions, like eFax, that integrate seamlessly with Adobe to let you send your PDF as a fax using the print function.
Faxing from Adobe is safe as long as you use a trusted digital fax solution. Paid online fax accounts from reputable partners like eFax let you send faxes safely and reliably using the print function within your Adobe PDF reader program.
Start Using eFax as Your Adobe Fax App Today
While Adobe doesn’t provide a built-in fax service, using eFax makes it simple to send your Adobe PDFs as faxes. Whether you’re using Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Scan, or other Adobe products, eFax offers a seamless solution for all your faxing needs. Try eFax today to streamline your document faxing process.
By following these steps, you can easily fax your Adobe PDF documents using eFax. This solution leverages the best of Adobe’s PDF capabilities with the convenience of online faxing.
The world is busier and more hectic than it’s ever been. For most of us, life, business and work happen non-stop, at all times of the day and seven days a week.
So, how do you find a fax service outside of normal business hours? The good news is, you can get fax services 24-hours a day, seven days a week, from a close as the smart phone in your pocket.
Understanding The Importance of 24-Hour Fax Services
If you’ve ever needed to get a late-night prescription from your doctor or send financial or legal documents to a different timezone, or tried to execute a contract for a loan or purchase on a Sunday, then you know the value of a 24-hour fax service.
These days, so much of our lives happen outside the hours of nine to five, and we expect to be constantly connected to one another. If you need to send important legal documents like an employment contract or even a sales order, you need access to fax services at all times.
Important benefits of 24-hour fax services include:
Rapid service, no matter the time of day or night.
Easily communicate with international partners in different time zones.
Anytime access to important documents.
What Does a 24-Hour Fax Service Do?
A 24-hour fax service allows customers to send one-off faxes at any time of the day or night. Most traditional 24-hour fax locations operate a fax machine as part of another business, like a print shop or shipping outlet.
How 24-Hour Fax Locations Work
If you find a 24-hour fax location in your area, you’ll need to either take in your printed document ready for faxing or your digital documents on a USB key to use it. Some fax locations let you send your document to the store as an email attachment, and then they’ll print it for you.
Once your document is ready, you pay the clerk to use the fax, dial the number and send your fax.
To receive a fax at a 24-hour location, you will need to visit the store, give the clerk your payment, get the fax number and then have your fax sent to you while you wait.
How To Find 24-Hour Fax Services Near You?
Finding a 24-hour local fax service near you is easier these days than ever. Easy ways to find fax services include:
Online Search: Use Google, Bing or even Amazon Alexa and ChatGPT to look for “fax service near me“
Local Business Directories: Look in the Yellow Pages, local papers or city commerce listings for fax services or business centers.
Map Services: Google Maps and others all offer information on local businesses. Whether you’re a Google, Apple Maps or even MapQuest user you can simply type “fax service” into the map system search bar.
Social Media: You can even search social media for businesses near you or for recommendations from your neighbors in local community Facebook groups.
3 Common Locations Offering 24-Hour Faxing Services
Many local businesses offer a fax machine service or rental within their operations. The three most common places you’ll find faxes include:
Office Supply Stores
Some office supply stores and printing shops offer fax services. These places might be open late or at long hours, while some are often open 24/7. If you have a local office supply store or print shop nearby, you should be able to find a convenient place to send a fax.
Office supply stores are better for sending faxes, as most don’t offer a fax-receiving option for customers.
Shipping and Mailing Centers
The local post office, UPS or even FedEx will often allow customers to send and sometimes even receive faxes. You can visit your local shipping and mailing center website or call ahead to check if they offer a fax service and their operating hours. The rates will vary by store, location and depending on where you need to send your faxed document. It’s often harder to find a shipping or mailing center to receive a fax at, as they’re set up mostly for sending.
Business Centers
Business centers are often found in areas with high business tourism. They might also be found in the lobby of a hotel or even a shared workspace like WeWork.
These business centers are usually the best place to receive faxes 24 hours a day as they have a dedicated fax machine and fax number you can use. The cost of using a business center might be expensive, and some business centers are reserved for people staying at the hotel or shared workspace they’re located in.
eFax: A Fast & Efficient 24-Hour Fax Solution at Your Fingertips
The best way to guarantee fast and convenient access to fax services any time of day or night is with a dedicated digital fax account from eFax. eFax acts as a portable fax machine you can use anytime and anywhere from any internet-connected device. With digital fax solutions, you can send and receive faxes from:
Send and receive documents right from your phone without leaving your house.
Send and receive documents outside of business hours.
Execute loan agreements.
Sign and send back important financial documents.
Accept employment offers.
Receive prescriptions from your doctor outside of business hours or when you’re on holiday in a different timezone.
Share faxes with your team.
There are so many ways faxing online makes life easier and more convenient. Access to faxing from anywhere, anytime, means you don’t have to drive to another location, take time off work or interrupt your weekend just to fax something. You can do it all from the comfort of your couch, desk, or even while you’re on the road.
Efficient & Reliable Document Management
Users can integrate eFax into just about any email client, including Gmail and Outlook, so you can send and receive faxes without changing programs or interrupting your workflow.
Our digital fax portal and the eFax mobile app let you sign faxes, add fax cover sheets and distribute faxes to your whole team. They streamline your document workflows by integrating into your existing software and giving you quick and easy access to your faxed documents anytime.
The eFax digital fax service complies with all relevant privacy and security legislation, including privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. That means faxing from eFax is fully HIPAA compliant.
Sign up for an eFax online fax account today and get immediate access to fast, reliable and convenient fax services from wherever you are, 24 hours a day.
FAQ’s Around 24 Hour Fax Services
You can search Google or your preferred search engine for local 24-hour fax services. You can also reach out to local community Facebook groups or directories for advice. Common locations that offer fax services include office supply stores, print shops, shipping and mailing locations or business centers. A digital fax service is a more convenient 24-hour fax solution.
Yes! Online fax solutions are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and from any internet-connected device. You won’t need to find a physical storefront or business center to send a fax. You can receive and send faxes from anywhere, anytime, using a digital faxing program like eFax.
Internet faxing is just as, and sometimes even more, reliable than a traditional fax service at a third-party office like an office supply store or business center. That’s because your faxed documents are held and stored in a secure, cloud-based storage system that only you have access to. The eFax online fax solution is compliant with federal privacy and document security legislation, including HIPAA.
A digital fax solution like eFax is the best alternative to traditional 24-hour fax services. eFax is cheaper, easier and more accessible than any traditional solution that uses a dedicated fax machine or printer. You can send and receive faxes with ease using your phone, laptop or computer and a simple online portal.
A 24-hour fax service lets you communicate with partners in different time zones, execute legal documents like contracts and agreements outside of regular business hours and access medical documents like test results or prescriptions at any time of the day or night. The best 24-hour fax solution is an online fax program like eFax that lets you send and receive faxes right from your smartphone or computer.
As its name implies, cloud faxing is 100% cloud-based. Cloud fax empowers you to send and receive faxes through an Internet fax service provider’s cloud-based platform. With this service, documents are sent and received over the internet instead of a traditional telephone line.
However, you don’t have to store data locally with cloud faxing. Instead, your fax information gets stored on a cloud-based fax server. In this way, cloud faxing is a reliable service that can help you meet your business needs.
How Does Cloud-Based Faxing Work?
The fax-to-cloud process is quick and easy and can be done from any device, from anywhere, with no fax machine or office space required.
To send a cloud fax, you’ll first need to create an account. You can do so by downloading your fax app or opening your online fax service in a web browser. After creating your account:
Add the fax number of your recipient or select one from your saved numbers in your account.
Hit send, and your fax is instantly sent to the recipient.
Understanding the Cloud
Cloud computing is a catchall term for services hosted using the internet. These services include:
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Software as a service (SaaS)
Cloud computing enables devices to access data and applications using the internet. Providers deliver cloud-based fax services using remote computers, databases and servers.
Understanding Cloud Fax Services
Cloud faxing is a SaaS offering people may describe in several ways. For instance, you may hear it called “Fax to cloud” or “Online cloud fax”. Cloud faxing works with various operating systems, including:
A cloud fax service offers a number of clear benefits over traditional faxes. First off, you’re no longer tied to a machine that needs upkeep and maintenance—not to mention the associated costs—or that requires you to be in the office to use it. Instead, you can send cloud-based faxes from anywhere, at any time, as long as you have access to the cloud.
As your business grows and you find that you need to send more faxes, cloud faxing enables you to scale your faxing capabilities with ease. Whether you need to add more users to your online fax account or scale the number of faxes you’re sending out, an cloud fax service eliminates many of the hurdles you’d face with a traditional fax machine, like increased maintenance, the need for additional machines or the domino effect of downtime.
Boosting Business Productivity with Cloud Faxing
Small changes can make significant productivity improvements. The biggest benefit you’ll notice with cloud faxing is increasing your team’s productivity. Enterprise cloud fax solutions simplify the process of sending essential faxes. They also eliminate problems like receiving junk faxes.
All cloud fax documents are digital. There’s no need to shuffle papers. You also don’t have to waste time refilling empty ink cartridges or servicing a broken fax machine.
In addition, cloud faxing reduces transmission time drastically. You can send and receive cloud faxes nearly instantaneously. Because there are no delays with cloud faxes, your team can get more done more quickly.
1. Simplification Equals Improved Productivity
For many companies, fax volume is on the rise. However, enterprises are moving away from traditional fax machines and complex server infrastructures and embracing cloud fax services.
Cloud-based fax services are very desirable for organizations. They simplify the work environment dramatically. Also, they empower organizations to eliminate the on-site complexity of software and hardware for fax telephony. At the same time, enterprise cloud fax solutions have all the capabilities of an on-site corporate fax server.
With these points in mind, the only thing you need to consider when choosing a cloud fax solution is the reputation of your service provider over time. At eFax, we’ve earned a stellar reputation serving business faxing needs for more than two decades.
2. Keeping Your Digital Documents Safe
The eFax Protect plan offers advanced security encryption, which provides maximum security for your confidential and essential faxes. With AES 256-bit encryption, you don’t receive faxes in your email inbox. Instead, you’ll receive a notification email from the MyPortal Messenger Center. AES 256-bit encryption is a fast and super-secure method for retrieving your cloud fax documents.
3. Secure Storage for Corporate Communication
Most cloud fax services are secure and modern. They also provide a way for users to store, access and manage digital faxes.
However, enterprise-grade cloud faxing offers added advanced features. For instance, it gives you and your team an online dashboard. You can easily and securely see where you stored all your past fax communications using the dashboard. This tool offers an easy way to search for documents and sort through fax transmission records.
Why Cloud Migration is Important For Enterprise-Grade Businesses
In recent years, cloud computing has rapidly grown in popularity. Spurred by a desire to reduce IT costs, increase efficiency and improve flexibility, more businesses are opting to move their infrastructure to the cloud. In fact, by 2025, experts predict that 85% of enterprises will have a cloud-first approach.
Migrating data to the cloud offers a number of benefits, including:
Streamlining of business operations.
Access to a variety of online tools, such as internet-based phone services and online cloud fax solutions.
A more secure, affordable and scalable solution for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
What Is Enterprise Cloud Migration?
The way that companies share data internally has changed drastically over the past several decades. Before computers became widely available, paper copies and filing cabinets allowed companies to create, collaborate on and store information.
As files became digitized, the space required to store them and how quickly they could be duplicated and shared changed. Companies began relying on in-house databases, as well as tools like copiers and scanners that made it possible to move their files to the cloud.
The cloud is the next revolution in how businesses operate. Enterprise cloud is a computing model that enables businesses to store their data online, streamline their digital infrastructure, access virtual IT services and take advantage of online services like faxing. This latest revolution in how data is stored, used and shared allows for faster, more streamlined workflows and letsemployees collaborate from anywhere.
6 Benefits of Cloud Migration
The many benefits of cloud migration are spurring the growing number of businesses making the move.
Having your business’ data stored on the cloud and providing access to automation services makes it faster and easier for employees to get access to the tools and data they need.
The cloud streamlines collaboration, so employees from around the world or in separate offices down the street can work together more effectively.
Moving from an on-site storage solution to cloud-based storage offers major cost savings.
As your business grows, scaling your cloud resources is easier, as well as more flexible, than with other storage solutions.
Cloud expenses can be adjusted to fit your business’s current budget.
Most cloud infrastructure options today provide top-notch security to keep your business’s sensitive data safe from the growing threat of ransomware and other forms of malware.
What Are Some of the Common Cloud Migration Challenges?
Making the move to the cloud offers plenty of clear benefits. But this doesn’t mean that businesses won’t face some roadblocks along the way. Which challenges your business may face will depend on your unique situation, as well as your strategy for migrating. Some common challenges businesses face include:
Lacking a clear strategy from the start, which means that different applications and sets of data are then being migrated individually. This can cause delays and slow down the process.
Not having a plan can also cause costs to swell, as new tech and applications are added as needed without considering overall spending.
Depending on the industry, another big challenge may be ensuring compliance during the transition to the cloud. For instance, HIPAA privacy rules require that extra care is taken to ensure data security and compliance at all times, including when migrating data to the cloud.
3 Key Steps For A Successful Cloud Migration
Much like the challenges that businesses face, the cloud migration process will vary for each. But to guarantee a smooth transition, businesses should follow some similar steps when moving to the cloud.
Step 1: Planning
The first step is to create a cloud migration plan. Planning ahead helps you clarify your company’s “why” for moving to the cloud. With this information solidly in place, you can then make decisions about which applications or technology to invest in, which data needs to be transitioned first and what security measures you may need for data protection.
This approach can help with cost optimization, as your business can take the time to consider which applications and services to invest in first, and which can wait.
Step 2: Migration
The next step is the migration itself. With a plan in place, you can transition each department or data set individually and smoothly, and be ready for each set as it comes.
Step 3: Upkeep
The final step in a successful cloud migration strategy is to have a plan in place for ongoing upkeep. Having the right cloud migration tools is essential to ensuring that data is safe and secure and that your business’s workflow isn’t interrupted during the process. This includes having a backup system in place to protect you from data loss, as well as a security suite to safeguard your data and infrastructure from malicious actors.
How eFax Can Help YouMigrate to Cloud Faxing?
Whether your business is looking to cut costs or preparing for future growth, making the move to the cloud is an important step. If you’ve already migrated, now is a great time to consider adopting cloud faxing as well. It’s easy to switch to eFax cloud faxing services.
Enterprise cloud-based fax solutions use 256-bit TLS encryption and Tier-3 secure servers so your faxes are secured to the highest possible standards. The eFax cloud fax service for businesses is compliant with privacy regulation including HIPAA and HITRUST.
Cloud fax services are less cumbersome, faster, more reliable, secure and convenient than traditional fax services. They offer secure document management, integration into your existing workflows and digital fax solutions don’t require paper or expensive fax toner.
Yes, cloud faxing is HIPAA compliant and will continue to be crucial for the healthcare ecosystem. Secure encryption ensures your faxes are fully secured and the eFax platform allows users to remain fully compliant with HIPAA regulations around privacy and data security.
Cloud faxing is cheaper than traditional faxing because you don’t have to maintain a landline, house bulky equipment or buy consumables like fax toner and paper. Most cloud faxing solutions offer a range of pricing options, from a flat fee for every fax sent to a monthly charge with a set number of faxes built in.
Cloud-based faxing is compatible with almost any document type you’ll find on your computer. That includes PDF, Word Doc, Excel doc, Google Docs and Google Sheets, or even PowerPoint slides and images like JPEG files or TIFF. If you have a document of any type, you can send it via eFax.
As the world’s leading provider of cloud fax services for midsized to large businesses, we receive a lot of questions from IT professionals about faxing and VoIP. “Can we fax over a VoIP line?” many ask us. Because most of these companies have already migrated to a VoIP infrastructure (which we have written about in previous blog posts) for their voice communications, they are obviously hoping we’ll say yes.
But not before we offer them some serious warnings.
“You can try, and it may work just fine,” we would say. “But it might not work consistently, meaning some faxes may go through but not others, especially longer ones more than a few pages. Or you may be able to send faxes but not receive, or visa versa.”
In fact, faxing over VoIP can be so problematic that many VoIP service providers recommend keeping a plain old telephone service (POTS) line or two just to be on the safe side with analog applications like fax, postage machines and alarm systems, not to mention as a backup for when the VoIP network goes down, which it invariably will from time to time. That advice gets the provider off the hook when problems pop up and brings in additional revenue, as traditional business phone lines typically cost over $50/month.
Can You Fax Over VoIP?
Technically speaking, yes, a business can send and receive faxes over a VoIP network. But the more you know about VoIP, the less confident you will be entrusting it with your company’s important fax transmissions, especially if you are doing a high volume of faxing.
And in case you aren’t familiar with VoIP, here’s a very brief overview of what it is and how it works.
What is VoIP
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a communication technique used for sending voice over what used to data-only networks. Rather than transmitting a conversation over the traditional circuit-based telephone network, VoIP takes the sounds in your phone call — the voices of the speakers and any background noises — and converts all of that into a series of data packets. These packets are like envelopes containing the bits that comprise the voice call.
The VoIP packets travel across your local area network (LAN) and/or wide area network (WAN), and may also be sent across the Internet, mixed in with many other packets containing email messages, word documents, spreadsheets, images, etc. At the receiving end, the voice packets are separated from the other ‘data’ packets and reassembled to recreate the words that were just spoken.
Naturally this all has to happen very fast, in a fraction of a second, so VoIP packets are considered to be very time-sensitive; if a packet containing a snippet of a word is delayed or arrives out of order, it is useless and must be discarded. That leads to the occasional blips and dropouts that one hears in VoIP phone calls, especially if they happen to travel over the public Internet where network congestion can cause packets to be delayed or lost along the way.
Converting voice to packets using VoIP technology makes sense for several reasons, but the first advantage is the tremendous cost savings that can be achieved by converging multiple types of business communications, that used to require multiple dedicated networks, over a single connection.
A related benefit is compression to reduce the amount of bandwidth required for phone calls. VoIP doesn’t just convert analog voice calls into digital format — the technology can compress that data considerably. A typical phone call, when it is digitized, requires 64kilobits per second (kbps) of bandwidth per call.
VoIP services, using compression protocols, can squeeze the number of bits in a voice call down to as little as 32, 16, 8 or even 4kbps (with corresponding reductions in sound quality), before sending that call across the Internet. For a large company or call center, whose employees make hundreds or even thousands of calls a day, this adds up to considerable savings.
But here’s the problem. While many forms of data can handle and even benefit from compression — including voice, documents and video — the analog fax tones cannot be compressed.
And this is where fax’s problems with VoIP begin.
How Fax Works In A VoIP Environment — And Why It Can Fail To Work…
There are two primary difficulties in transmitting fax over an IP network or VoIP service.
The first problem: Fax cannot be compressed so it must be digitized for transmission over IP as a full rate 64Kbps data stream. That may not matter for occasional use, but it adds up in a high volume faxing environment, especially at peak hours when everyone else is trying to send their documents or make calls at the same time. Most VoIP calls are compressed to 32kbps or less, so fax consumes at least twice the bandwidth of a compressed VoIP call. In addition, there is the IP packet overhead, which increases the required bandwidth to around 88kbps, or at least 175% more bandwidth than a VoIP call.
Second, Fax has little tolerance for packet delay and packet loss. One of the virtues of IP is that large data files can be compressed and “packetized,” broken down into smaller discrete packets of information and then transmitted over the Internet. This technique attaches a ‘header’ containing destination and source IP addresses to each individual packet (like the “to” and “from” address on an postal envelope) — and including information about the packet’s place in the larger sequence of the data (“I’m the fourth piece in a seven-piece series that makes up part of this fax”), and where it’s going (“Here’s the IP address of the computer where I’m supposed to be delivered”).
What this means is that IP allows the network to find the fastest, clearest route for each individual packet to reach its destination. This sometimes means that pieces of the transmission — such as an email message — arrive out of sequence. The process still works reliably, though, because the header information helps the system put the document back together almost immediately upon arrival at the recipient’s end. If some packets get lost along the way, they can be retransmitted until the full message is assembled.
This works well for documents and email, where a few seconds of delay is not noticed, but not so well for ‘real-time’ communications, and for Fax the delay could be deadly.
You’ve no doubt been on a phone call where someone cuts out momentarily and you miss a part of a word or two. That’s a packet(s) not reaching the other end of its VoIP journey to your phone or arriving too late, in which case the packet will be discarded. In those cases, all you have to do is ask the other person to repeat their last sentence. And believe it or not, in other cases a word or two is dropped and your brain is able to interpolate the missing information without your even realizing it consciously. This is why voice managed to make the transition to IP despite the imperfections.
A fax, by contrast, cannot be compressed and cannot tolerate even a tiny percentage of packet loss — even a 1% packet loss, and more than a couple seconds of delay, can cause the connection to time-out and the fax to fail. It also cannot tolerate a break in the packet sequence which could result in more delay. The recipient’s fax machine might very well read any of these issues as a problem with the inbound fax, and kill the entire transmission.
The second problem: Fax transmissions have low tolerance for interoperability issues. The hundreds of millions of active fax machines in the world use several different fax protocols — T.30, T.38 and G.711 being the primary ones, and speeds like V.14 or V.34, while VoIP typically uses G.729 to compress calls and save bandwidth.
When a fax is sent over an analog network like the phone system, the two fax machines communicate with each other and agree on the type and speed of transmission. But when the fax is being transmitted over VoIP, any gaps in the tones create the same problems for the recipient’s fax machine.
If a fax travels over a VoIP network from a machine using one protocol and arrives at a machine that expects another, this can cause gaps in the fax’s analog tones as the system tries to work out the protocol issues. The fax machines misinterpret the gaps and lose synchronization with each other.
For example, when the VoIP network is set to use G.729 compression, it has to switch to G.711 for uncompressed transmission when a fax is sent. The brief breaks on the fax tones that occur as the VoIP system tries to negotiate between the two protocols can cause the fax to fail. And the longer the fax, the less likely it is to make it through.
T.38 may save the day, someday. The newer T.38 protocol was intended to transmit faxes directly over IP (FoIP), so the fax doesn’t need to be converted to an audio stream first. In theory, two T.38 capable fax machines should be able to communicate over VoIP.
But T.38 must be on both ends of a network to work, and many service providers never implemented the protocol. If the fax has to traverse networks that do not support T.38, it will need to be transcoded, which can add latency, increase cost, and may cause the call to disconnect. In addition, the spec has been implemented in various ways by manufacturers, so that one machine’s T.38 may be incompatible with another vendor’s equipment. The result is a failure to communicate.
Fax Can’t Share the Information Highway
An intuitive way to understand the unique challenges that Internet Protocol creates for faxing is by thinking of a standard analog fax transmission as a presidential motorcade. Fax was designed to enjoy a dedicated and direct path from sender to recipient. On the old telephone network, fax traveled over a dedicated circuit it didn’t have to share with anybody. Returning to our motorcade analogy, this is where all cross-traffic is blocked to keep the motorcade’s speed high and consistent, and in which all of the cars in the motorcade can remain in their original sequence for the entire journey. Put simply, all lanes for the fax are cleared from start to finish so there is never any delay.
A VoIP or other IP-based network, on the other hand, was designed for complex and ever-changing traffic patterns — more like a 12-lane highway where a mixture of real-time and non-real time data packets (cars) are frenetically traversing the path and jumping in and out of lanes at all times. Some of these pieces of data share a lane for part of their journey; some data packets arrive in a different order than they were sent; still others might get re-routed or even stuck on the road for a few moments, forcing the finished data transmission to wait at the recipient’s end until they arrive and can be pieced back together in order.
Fax is a road-hog of a technology, not designed to share its lane with anyone else. So when confronted with delayed or dropped packets, fax simply shuts down.
Which is why we at eFax Corporate explain to the IT professionals who ask us that, “yes, technically you can send or receive a business fax over a VoIP network — but doing so may create more problems for your organization than it solves.”
So What Can You Do About Fax After You’ve Migrated to an IP Environment
It’s tempting to look for a way to migrate your company’s legacy fax infrastructure to your new IP environment. After all, IP creates efficiencies, it helps your organization save money, and it can centralize many of the communications technologies that your IT department once had to manage and troubleshoot separately.
But if we’ve convinced you that fax won’t enjoy the many benefits of IP that your other data communications are enjoying, then the question is: What can you do to modernize, streamline and improve the efficiency of your legacy fax infrastructure?
The way we see it, you have the following four options:
1. You can leave your existing fax infrastructure in place, and continue to pay for dedicated telecom services. This is relatively safe, at least for now, but it fails to address many of your existing issues with faxing and creates new ones of it own. Caring for an aging in-house fax infrastructure is costly and time-consuming for your business or IT department. Also, as you know because you’re managing it, a legacy fax environment is inefficient.
2. If you’ve migrated to IP and now are having trouble with faxing, you can roll-back to costly analog lines for every fax number (or to a full onsite network of fax servers and fax machines that also require their own numbers over digital T1 lines). A big step backward for the IT team — but a happy turn of events for your telco provider.
3. Wait for the standards bodies to introduce a new protocol that fixes the fax-over-IP problems such as delay, jitter, packet loss and other reliability issues. Keep in mind that G.711, T.37, T.38 and other protocols are still in operation decades after they were introduced. So you might be waiting a long time for the perfect, standards-body solution.
4. Move to a cloud fax model. The cloud faxing solutions from eFax Corporate provides the ideal platform for delivering faxes over IP networks because they convert the fax into an email attachment which is independent of the underlying network technology. The fax is now a series of data packets riding on a data network. Voila! Problem solved, and users can now send and receive faxes directly from their desktop, with a complete audit trail of very fax sent and received.
For Cloud Faxing, You Can Trust Industry Leader eFax Corporate
For the confidential documents you need to send or receive by fax, your enterprise can check all of the important boxes by upgrading your VoIP fax infrastructure to the cloud fax leader, eFax Corporate.
Our fax by email service is built on a highly secure, redundant global network — which can enhance your organization’s document security and regulatory compliance while at the same allowing your IT teams to outsource their entire fax infrastructure to a trusted cloud provider.
For more about Cloud Fax, you can also download our free white paper:
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