What Do We Mean By “Fax Security”?

Despite the convenience and ubiquity of email, there are still lots of reasons why fax transmissions are preferred by businesses and the government, especially when it comes to handling sensitive data. The biggest reason of them all is security.

The security benefits of fax technology don’t just make it the best choice for transmitting sensitive information, but also make faxing a safer option than email for more common day-to-day use. The good news is that faxing can be just as convenient as sending an email with online faxing options such as Fax App eliminating the need for on-location faxing at the UPS or the post office. 

To fully explore how secure faxing is, we need to take a closer look into the two main topics that people mean when they talk about security – practical security, and legal security.
1. Practical Security
Practical security refers to fax security from practical, physical threats. This is, of course, the number one concern for people when thinking about security. For example – how safe are your faxes from hackers? Scroll down to this section to find out why faxing is very safe in this regard, even more secure than email.

2. Legal Security
Legal security concerns the security regulations and laws that protect you and the sensitive information that you fax, as well as the legal rights you have over your data when you are faxing. If you scroll down to this section, you’ll discover why you actually have more privacy, legal rights and regulatory protections when you are faxing, compared to using email.

We’re going to take a closer look at these two security areas and discover why fax machines and online faxing will give you more security benefits.

Practical Security

Practical security is usually what we think of first when we talk about security. The thought of sending any information digitally makes us worry about scams and phishing, hacking, and people we’d rather not be seeing our messages! Regular things such as filing your taxes with the IRS involves disclosing your SSN details, personal and business details – so you want to make sure you’re using a secure transmission.

Whilst email can be safeguarded using a variety of security protocols to make it very secure, if you compare standard email services to modern fax machines and online faxing services, it’s faxing is the safer option. Let’s go through some ordinary practical security concerns one-by-one and see what makes faxing secure.

Scams & Phishing

It’s well-known that scams and phishing attempts are very common over email, text, and over phone calls. We’ve all received suspicious-looking email encouraging us to click on links or open malicious attachments, or a phone call from somebody claiming to be from our bank or phone company. If you’ve ever worked an office job, you’ll have been given guidance and training to try and spot a “phishing” email like this. There’s a reason criminals target email and phone systems—because it’s much easier!

If you’re using email, all it takes is for you to be fooled once by an email address that might look very similar to an official company email, and you’re only one click away from a major security breach—it can all happen in less than a second. But if you’re receiving incoming faxes, you’re just receiving an image and text, so there’s no way criminals can fool you into quickly clicking on a link or attachment or giving away a password without realizing.

There’s also no way these criminals can impersonate a fax number in the way they can with an email address; you can view the fax number of the sender and just check if it’s the real fax number of the company.

It’s for these reasons that scams and phishing security issues are far less common using fax; criminals know it’s much harder to fool you, so scam and phishing attempts mostly focus on email and phone systems.

Cyber-Attacks

Faxing networks are far less useful to cybercriminals; a fax machine is often on a limited network, and whilst they can connect to the internet, they are not linked to a much wider IT infrastructure like email servers are. That’s why, when you look at the biggest data breaches in history, none of them involve faxing; a fax machine’s immediate network is smaller and has far less useful information linked to it. Think of how many things you use your email address for—often banking, social media, shopping, etc. In a way, the more convenient and ubiquitous email becomes, the more exposed you are to a security breach. This is why many businesses have responded to email cyber-attacks by doing more faxing.

When it comes to cyber-attacks, there are many entry points to hack email: sender desktop, recipient desktop, DNS, external mail servers, etc. Emails also stop in multiple servers on their way to the intended recipient, which means more potential interception points. But with a traditional fax machine, you must physically tap a phone line in order to intercept a fax because they use point-to-point transmission, which online faxing also does.

Hackers can target thousands of email servers from anywhere in the world, which has happened many times. But to hack a phone line, you have to physically access the phone line, which nobody can do to thousands of phone lines per day. This is another reason why malicious software and hackers tend to target emails and phone systems far more than fax networks—it’s more rewarding for them!

Encryption Protection

Online fax services bring an improvement over regular email security thanks to encryption protocols like Transport Layer Security and end-to-end AES 256-bit encryption, which is also what the US government uses to protect its nuclear codes! This encryption process converts every fax you send into unreadable ciphers as they travel point-to-point, opening it only for the intended recipient.

For this end-to-end encryption to be possible with email, both the sender and the recipient need to use compatible encryption software, and encrypted email services are not always the standard with services such as Gmail, whereas fax services like Fax from iPhone create an encrypted environment for their users because they have to be HIPAA compliant. So, whilst you can get secure encrypted email services, it’s much easier and more standard with online faxing.

Emails in particular are very unsafe without encryption, since unlike faxes, emails can make lots of “stops” in different servers when they are sent. Since physical fax machines operate on telephone lines, use point-to-point transmission and usually don’t have an internet connection, encryption isn’t usually needed.

Legal Security

HIPAA

Regular data privacy laws change depending on US state and industry; there is no comprehensive data privacy law at the federal level. But HIPAA is a federal law which forces any business that might handle medical records to create a strict faxing security process, which standard online fax services comply with. HIPAA is much stronger than regular privacy laws and makes fax transmission very secure.

There’s a key difference that makes emails less secure than faxing under HIPAA: under HIPAA, organisations that handle your personal information are allowed to use unencrypted email services in some situations. This is why traditional faxing and online faxing services, which are HIPAA-compliant, are the more legally secure ways to send documents.

HIPAA does not just apply to health providers; since many businesses may handle your healthcare personal information, such as banks and insurance companies, it has become the standard across most industries to guarantee secure faxes. There are strict requirements to notify anybody whose information has been leaked, which means you must be notified if you fax personal information and it gets stolen. There is no similar federal law forcing online email providers to notify you if your password or emails get stolen.

Privacy Laws

You have more privacy when faxing. This is because faxes sent over a telephone line are harder for anybody to monitor; a public switched telephone network needs a lot of legal authority to monitor. Emails, however, are a different story. For example, emails over 180 days old are considered “abandoned” by the US government and therefore can be seized and read with no legal justification.

Also, punishments are harsher for stealing physical mail or tap telephone lines than they are if someone were to hack your email account; using fax phone lines or the postal service gives you more protection, which is why you are often still asked to use mail or fax when document sharing.

Other Legal Security Benefits

There are some other legal advantages to sending faxes, whether using online faxes or a physical fax machine.

• Firstly, digital signatures or electronic signatures are not always legally recognised, but faxed signatures are, so if you’re sending legal documents, it’s more secure to send faxes. For example, you cannot use electronic signatures to sign a will, cancel utility services, sign adoption papers, or serve a notice of eviction, among many other things.

• A fax message has a clear audit trail, allowing you to track exactly when and where faxes were sent and delivered with a delivery confirmation. Nobody can say they have “lost” a fax in a dispute if you have the proof.

Start Secure Faxing Today

So, despite the common belief that faxing is outdated, it cannot be denied that it’s still one of the most secure ways to send sensitive information. The convenience of email has come with higher risks, but now, thanks to online fax services and fax apps, that convenience is also available with fax.

To get started and benefit from fax security, use a top Android app or iPhone app for online faxing.