Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

Realize the Benefits of the Digital Age While Avoiding Its Curse

By Lynne DeVenny

The ability to produce documents digitally, rather than on paper, has made it easier to create, store and transmit them. But there?s an ugly downside. The presence of digital documents loaded with confidential information has drawn identity thieves, hackers and other nefarious characters like ants to a picnic.

Identity thieves are just one reason the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prohibits confidential patient medical records from being sent via email. The U.S. government says email is just not secure enough to protect patient confidentiality.

It?s also one of the reasons faxing remains so prominent in industries such as the legal profession that need to transmit large amounts of confidential information quickly. Because faxes use a different type of technology to break documents into electronic bits during transmission, anyone trying to intercept a fax would end up with a lot of incomprehensible gobbledygook.

Even within the faxing world, however, there are different degrees of security and privacy. At the low end sit fax machines.

Since they are expensive to own and operate relative to their day-to-day value, most fax machines are shared. As a result, they sit in a common area where they can be easily accessed. Unfortunately, that also means documents that come in sit exposed, available for anyone to view.

Then there are the issues with sorting and distributing. If one person delivers faxes, he/she will have to at least get a quick look to decide where it goes. This means people other than the intended recipient can view the information. And there?s always the possibility that a fax can be delivered to the wrong person.

Privacy is also a concern at the sending end. If you walk away while sending a 10-page fax, that information is going to sit out in the open until you retrieve it.

So if you can?t send emails, and fax machines aren?t secure enough, how exactly are you supposed to transmit documents quickly to the people who do need to get them? It?s simple ? use an Internet fax service.

An Internet fax service combines the best of both email and faxing while eliminating the privacy risks of both. It uses the same technology as fax machines to transmit the documents electronically, making them safe in cyberspace. But rather than going to or from a machine in a common area, an Internet fax service sends and receives documents through an email account or a secure online server, which means it goes directly to or from a PC, laptop or smart phone.

As an added benefit, since you?re not tied to a particular machine or location, you can send and receive secure faxes wherever you happen to be. Your fax number and account go with you, so you don?t have to go back to the office when you?re out. Or worse yet, have to fax from a public location, which invites in a whole new line of ants.

Privacy is a huge concern these days. And whether it?s government-mandated or simply good business, Internet faxing can help keep confidential documents away from prying eyes.
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Steve Adams is the vice president of marketing for Protus, a provider of communications tools for small-to-medium-businesses and enterprise organizations, including the MyFax (www.myfax.com) internet fax service; my1voice, a virtual phone service; and Campaigner, an e-mail marketing service. He can be reached at sadams@protus.com.

Related Post at The Trial Practice Tips Weblog "Tech: Try a Virtual Fax Service"

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on April 07, 2010 (boomark / email).