Security threats, data breaches, and cyberattacks are escalating across the healthcare, financial, legal, government, and hospitality sectors. Incidents like the Yahoo breach, which affected 3 billion accounts, and Marriott’s Starwood breach, which compromised the personal data of up to 500 million guests, illustrate how exposed information often ends up on the black market, fueling identity theft and targeted phishing scams.
In the healthcare sector, data breaches can have life-threatening consequences. The Protenus Breach Barometer reported that over 8 million patient records were compromised in 2018 alone. Addressing these breaches diverts doctors’ attention from patient care, and research from Vanderbilt University suggests hospital data breaches are linked to more than 2,100 patient deaths annually.
To prevent such breaches, organizations must implement strong security measures, such as secure document delivery by ETHERFAX. Industry experts agree that email posed the most significant cybersecurity challenge in healthcare last year. Although email systems can be made compliant with data privacy regulations, messages typically pass through multiple servers before reaching their destination. This indirect transmission leaves sensitive information, such as protected health information (PHI), vulnerable to malware, cyberattacks, and server failures. According to the “Verizon 2018 Breach Investigations Report,” 92% of malware is delivered through email.
As attackers continuously evolve their methods to access sensitive data, organizations must utilize document delivery systems with robust encryption to secure both in-transit and at-rest information. Fax remains one of the most reliable methods for secure document delivery today, particularly in healthcare. Its role in maintaining data security has led to the online fax market being projected to grow to $2.4 billion by 2022.
By combining the security of fax technology with cloud scalability, organizations can transmit sensitive data more securely and efficiently. Fax is particularly well-suited for the healthcare industry, ensuring secure transport of unstructured data while complying with government regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Although often viewed as outdated, modern fax systems integrate secure transmission technologies for rich document delivery.
End-to-end encryption methods, such as those defined by the Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES), ensure that data is secure throughout its transmission. ECIES is a hybrid encryption system that utilizes Elliptic Curve Cryptography to generate a shared secret between parties, protecting information with unique keying material and authentication mechanisms to verify data integrity during transmission.
A fax solution that leverages ECIES ensures encryption from the moment information leaves the sender until it is accepted and verified by the receiver. Even if a third party attempts to intercept the communication, the data would remain indecipherable. These encryption schemes provide secure transmission even over unsecured channels.
Fax technology has evolved from traditional machines and phone lines to cloud-based, virtual platforms, offering businesses new ways to securely send and receive information from numerous endpoints. Both enterprises and healthcare organizations find online faxing a cost-effective, scalable, and secure solution for document transmission, with benefits including automation capabilities and increased adoption of cloud technology.
