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Cyber Security for Small Business: 5 Powerful Solutions

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

Cyber security — otherwise known as online security — has become increasingly important to businesses. The question of whether or not it deserves attention is no longer relevant; the question instead is, how much? Cyber criminals, often referred to as hackers, are becoming ever-more advanced in their techniques. Attacks are highly sophisticated and can have a seriously powerful impact on anyone who falls victim to them.

Unfortunately, small businesses are seeing rising risk.

Small business cyber security has never been so necessary. 20% of small businesses in the UK are subject to attempts by hackers to infiltrate their systems in some way every single year. This infiltration might be through phishing attacks, malware threats, ransomware attack, or other kinds of cyber crime. The cost of a breach is staggering; billions are lost every year to cyber attacks, with SMEs paying out an average amount of £1300 to repair damage to infrastructure caused by incidents like viruses or damage to hardware/equipment.

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Over their lifetime, the majority of small businesses will see losses at the hands of cyber attacks. And it isn’t just the threat of cyber attacks that now has people worried. GDPR rules mean attacks like phishing emails could cost you thousands in reversing system damage — and a significant portion of your turnover as punishment for not assessing and managing risks to your computers and devices well enough.

However, business owners are not helpless. There are things your company can do to ward off cyber crime and stop criminals from accessing your networks and data. But what actions and measures can you take to protect digital assets? This article discusses our top five cyber security business tips that all small business owners should make sure they are following:

1. Use UPDATED Anti-Virus Tools

Cyber security for business can be taken care of by other businesses. Companies stake their living and reputation on building software like firewall security and anti-malware that aims to halt even the most advanced attacks in their tracks. The best products are often not cheap, and you must always make sure you have the latest version to ensure new threats are covered, but the costs are worth it. Be sure your small business pays for cyber security software that regularly updates and rolls out patches for the latest threats. It doesn’t mean it can catch everything, but using old cyber security software is asking for trouble.

Organisations that don’t follow this simple guidance become easy targets for cyber crime. If your small business doesn’t have the latest anti-virus tools, hackers are more likely to invest their own time in taking down such an easy and vulnerable target. The deployment of advanced anti-virus tools results in diminished risk. It also supports your case in the event of a breach, as it demonstrates you were using the highest standards of security systems but were simply unable to prevent an attack.

2. Use UPDATED Encryption Protocol

What happens if a hacker does gain access to your files, documents, or databases? If you lack security protocols, they may simply be able to look at your organisation’s important information without any barriers. You needn’t let it be so easy, however. There are tools to help guard this information.

Data encryption allows your business to scramble information within a file, so it matches with symbols and corresponding letters and numbers. In effect, it turns something readable into something unreadable.

The only way to access the information now is to unscramble it using an encryption key. If cyber criminals do not have access to the key, they cannot view the data and it is protected. Investment in updated encryption protocol, such as advanced TLS encryption used by eFax, secures data from hackers and improves cyber security. Make sure you are using updated platforms that routinely upgrade their software, though, as older updates can soon become obsolete as hackers learn how to bypass the encryption keys.

3. Backup Data to the Cloud

An increasingly common cyber security threat faced by small business is ransomware. These attacks aim to take hostage of your data and files. If small business owners want them back, management must pay funds to the hacker. Failure to pay money in exchange for the release of the ransomed information means your small business data will be destroyed and lost. To curb this nightmare situation, the best idea is obviously backups. The problem then becomes what happens if a hacker also ransoms your backup, or you put it on a physical platform like an external drive and lose it? It sounds ridiculous, but one study found millions of dollars are lost by businesses simply because USB drives are misplaced and never recovered. It’s a practice that has its own risk factors. The answer to this form of cyber security threat is simple: Cloud data storage. Companies can now store their backups on external servers, managed by companies with expertise in cyber security for small businesses. This kind of server offers protection by being separate from your security network, which means even if a cyber security attack compromises your small business, the cloud facility remains safe and separate. eFax are strong supporters of cloud technology when it comes to improving cyber security for small business customers. All our services are managed on the cloud, which means a document on your system subjected to ransomware attacks is protected — if you’ve secured it on our server.

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4. Eliminate Risk-Factor Technology

Certain technology can actually increase the risk of cyber security threats to your small business. The major culprits are surprising ones, like your employee’s phones and laptops. When staff connect their devices to your system, they have the potential to compromise network security if their computer has been infiltrated by hackers already. They may also enter login information and passwords to work accounts through unprotected personal devices. Programs like keyloggers can record inputs and use them to access your networks. Even if your cyber security practices are excellent, problems with personal devices can lead to vulnerabilities from external sources.

Other threats to business information come from apps like message sharing services. These apps are known to have notoriously weak processes for protecting data, which means if an employee shares work-related information through the app, they are opening up your business to new methods of infiltration and data theft. Then you have systems like fax machines that introduce risk factors because they cannot defend against cyber security problems like more modern technology. To solve these problems, your business needs to do a few things: It needs to update weak technology to more suitable options. With fax, you can ditch the fax machine and move to online fax with eFax, which upgrades your security while enabling fax. You can also stop your employees using personal messaging apps to share data and instead find more secure business-focused resources.

Finally, ensure only approved devices access your network — those that have passed tests to ensure they have good anti-virus systems and protection methods are in place. If the device is not approved, it cannot access the business network and risk exposing it to threats.

5. Enact Strict Password Policies

It’s another process that might seem obvious, but so many business handbooks and training content programs fail to include a password policy as one of their most critical elements. The advice of any cybersecurity business will be that one of the most important ways to plan for better cyber security protection is to update your passwords regularly and consistently. Events of cyber security breaches due to weak or compromised passwords are exceptionally common.

As many as 81% of breaches are the result of password infiltration.

Password infiltration may be a major threat to everything from your website to social media profiles — as well as access to email accounts and any attachments they hold. But the fact is, it’s straightforward to perform reviews of password policies. You can achieve success immediately without the need for a budget. Simply introduce mandatory schemes that ensure passwords include a random term or random characters, and number combinations; you can even enforce types of symbols too. Then, make sure passwords are changed on set dates throughout the year. The addition of these simple but effective rules can help protect your site and network from many forms of cyber attack.

The route to better cyber security isn’t as difficult as you might have thought. You can make a range of changes right now. Apply the actions outlined on this list, taking all necessary steps to secure your business’s cyber world, and you’ll better protect your clients, your assets, and your future.

Be part of the cyber security revolution with eFax and improve the state of your cyber protection systems immediately. Get peace of mind when sending fax and improve document security with our encrypted service. Discover all the benefits of eFax today and sign up for your trial offer now!

Business Communication Tools Your Company Needs

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

The era of digitalisation is upon us. There is no avoiding the inevitable. It’s time for businesses to embrace the age of the internet and adapt to the current landscape. Being behind the curve isn’t just bad for your reputation — being viewed as old fashioned and outdated — it’s also harmful. Failure to maintain the most modern tools costs your business money. It slows performance, cuts efficiency and presents barriers to both internal and external task management.

Nowhere are these impacts more keenly felt than with your communication. Digital communication tools are constantly refined and updated. Cloud technology now means that both internal communication tools and solutions used for customer communication are always under scrutiny. If you don’t invest in the right business communications tools, you’ll find yourself facing unnecessary barriers to success.

At eFax, we’re experts in business communication. After all, our entire business is built around a business communication tool. Our experience can help get your business up to date with all the necessary communication tools and stay ahead of the competition.

 
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Recording Tools for Internal Training

2020 saw a major increase in the number of individuals working from home. While this was caused by unprecedented circumstances, the trend of flexibility in the workplace has pushed modern companies towards remote working for a while.

It is increasingly common for people to work out of the home office. There are numerous benefits to remote work, from reduced costs to employee satisfaction, but there are also drawbacks.

One such drawback is training. In a traditional office environment, you can call an internal gathering easily, but this is made much more difficult when you have members of the team in different locations.

A simple answer would seem to be web conferencing — which we discuss later — but what if the flexibility of your remote work means that some employees cannot make the virtual training session? You may find that people are on different time zones, or have unusual work schedules.

Offering flexible work then enforcing attendance to training events that conflict with employee lifestyles is not a practice we would recommend. What you want instead are internal communications tools that enable training to take place in a way that works for everyone.

Recording software — such as Screencast-O-Matic — allows you to share powerful team communication without getting your team together. You can record your computer screen live with audio, running through training documents, presentations or work seminars. You then upload the video to the cloud and allow people to watch and absorb training in a way that fits their schedules.

The result is that messages and training is always available to everyone. Nobody is left behind and business communication remains unhindered by remote work.

Video Conference Software

Video conferencing software has become absolutely essential for modern businesses. If you don’t have a web conferencing solution for both internal communication and chatting to customers and clients, you need to make a change immediately.

Lack of long-distance connectivity is one of the biggest barriers to success. With the globalisation of the economy, and new trade options opened throughout the world, staying insular and focused only on those opportunities closest to you will hamper your growth prospects.

Video conferencing enables access to untapped business resources. From overseas clients to long-distance employees, you can use video conferencing to build a real connection to the wider world without having to invest in major costs like relocation or travel.

You may have heard of tools like Zoom used for this. Video conferencing is a very important external and internal communications tool.

Online Fax Technology

It probably won’t come as a surprise as a business owner or company representative that fax is still very much a popular form of file sharing and communication. Fax machines remain one of the most popular sources of data transfer in the modern business world, despite their age. Billions of fax are sent every year, and found everywhere from the USA to Japan. It’s a very important way of sharing and distributing information. Valuable for its legal authenticity, fax is going nowhere.

But fax machines are problematic for digital businesses.

Fax machines are expensive. They’re also slow, inefficient and vulnerable to data breaches. There are many reasons not to have a fax machine in your business, but the essential communication features they offer often outweigh the negatives.

There are just no other solutions available that can match fax.

Business communication tools should always be a support structure for your company, and never a liability. Weaknesses in fax machines present real dangers, such as the faxploit. It’s clear that businesses need to retain fax capabilities for both internal communications and for those with clients, suppliers and partners. But, fax machines are too dangerous to keep around.

Online faxing from eFax is the solution.

Online fax is a communication tool businesses can use to maximise fax functionality all while removing the risk-prone fax machine. It works by taking fax digital and transmitting fax files over the internet. This affords all the modern security and conveniences of the web, without the drawbacks of outdated fax technology. Because eFax can convert digital documents in physical formats, and physical formats into digital documents, the communication tool also means you can continue to transmit data between your organisation and one that uses a fax machine, even when you don’t own a fax machine.

eFax is also highly advantageous for remote work, as it ensures all members of staff have access to fax without having to be near a fax machine.

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Instant Messaging Services

A study by Facebook discovered that instant messaging is one of the most popular forms of communication for consumers. More than half of respondents to a survey run by the social media brand said they preferred instant messaging to calls. The convenience of being able to hop onto a chat is irresistible. It’s fast, low commitment, and you can come back to it later. The study by Facebook also revealed that while 70% of businesses thought they were communicating well with customers, only 20% of customers agreed. Clearly, there is a disparity here, and it all comes to your business communication tools.

But instant messaging isn’t just beneficial for consumers.

When it comes to internal communication tools, instant messaging has its place too. Long-distance team communication cannot be carried out exclusively over video conferences. Yes, they’re great for team management and conveying information to many people at once. Yes, they’re also great for in-depth discussions. But, for quick updates, they are woefully inefficient. Having to set up a call every time you need a minor tweak to a document or would like an update on something small is going to absorb lots of time. You want something quick and snappy. Something easy and fast. More responsive than email, but less time-consuming than video conferencing.

You want instant messaging business communication tools. So what are your options?

For business-to-consumer tools, you’ll want something easily available to your customers and easy to use. Many businesses actually use Facebook to provide instant messaging services to their customers. You can activate this tool on a business Facebook page and it allows any of the billions of users on the platform to get in touch. You can also introduce your own instant message system directly to your website. A chat box feature allows customers to send you instant messages that can be linked to your mobile like a text service. And this idea also brings us to WhatsApp. Many businesses have set up a dedicated WhatsApp number for their customers to contact them on.

There are plenty of options available and the more you use, the better your availability.

For team communication, your options are strangely expansive and at the same time more limited. Unlike with customers, who use a variety of instant messaging communication tools you must adapt to, you can dictate exactly how internal communications are run. So, while there are several different business communications to pick from, you don’t have to meet any demands by incorporating more than one. You can simply pick the best solution.

Slack has become the most popular instant messaging internal communication tool for team communication. The company has a value of $20 billion. It is one of the most powerful collaboration tools available. It allows for easy instant messages to be sent between individuals and groups of people. You can develop channels based on different tasks and workflows, and even use it for internal calls. It’s brilliant for task management and file sharing, too. Hence the popularity, and why in a market full of solutions, it’s the only one we suggest you use.

Virtual Receptionists

Availability in business is key. Missed phone calls are missed sales opportunities. Being out of the office means reduced revenue. You always want to be in a position to answer calls and take messages. Yet that isn’t realistic. You can’t always be available, but while using business communication tools, your company can be. Virtual receptionist software acts as a digital receptionist for your business. The technology can exist to convey messages to customers when you can’t. It can also be used to establish call forwarding. Very much a customer-facing communication tool, virtual receptionists are essentially a digital voice on the end of your phone number. You can program the responses and add your own pre-recorded messages. The solution features a handy app that lets you alter your virtual receptionist responses on the fly. This means you can always provide accurate information to customers as to why their call is not being answered, from stating you’re unexpectedly unavailable to informing them you’ll be back in 15 minutes and to please leave a number or retry soon. How exactly does it work? Features of this business communication tool include:
  • Providing information to customers without having to pick up the phone such as the location of your business, opening hours, and any important updates through pre-recorded messages
  • Taking automatic meeting bookings when out of the office
  • Providing a response to clients when your business is closed
  • Enabling call forwarding so that if you’re busy, the call to your business can be directed to another member of the team.

Social Media Schedulers

Social media has become an essential part of business communication channels. People use services like Twitter and Facebook not only as ways to locate information about your business, but also to stay up to date with news and create conversations. Most people get their news from social media. This is where your customers are going for the information they need, whether it’s looking for offers, product launches, or details about changes to your company. You want to be able to give users what they are looking for when they come to your social profile. Why? Besides being able to capture new sales leads and engage your audience, people are much more likely to use your business again, and recommend it, if they’ve had a positive interaction with you on social media. If you don’t have a social presence, you achieve none of the above.

You need to empower your brand by using social media to communicate with your followers and consumers.

But we’re then introduced to a problem: Time.

Social media management is time-consuming and unless you have a member of staff able to update social accounts regularly, you can easily fall behind. It’s tough to find regular slots in the day to get onto social media and post. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about this if you optimise your approach. There are business communication tools available where you don’t have to be constantly aware of your social channels, yet they are still able to perform.

Social media schedules are business communication tools that let you take pre-planned content and use the software to post to a schedule. You can essentially assign a few hours of an afternoon to prepare all your social posts for a month, and then have them roll out on scheduled dates as the scheduler automatically posts them. Social schedulers are also cloud-based technology, which means you can view and edit scheduled posts made by other members of your team. This makes it easy for management to delegate social posting while having the ability to offer a final review.

You keep your time efficient and your social media accounts remain active — providing consumers with the content they need to engage with your business. Social media schedulers to consider include HootSuite, Buffer and Sprout Social. They all do essentially the same thing, so we suggest to pick one and learn how to use it instead of switching between.

eFax is part of Consensus, a leading provider of business communication tools. Our solutions can enable business growth during the digital age. Discover everything we have to offer.

The Work-From-Home Era: Best Home Office Tech for 2020

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

The prevalence of the work-from-home lifestyle has been rising with ever-increasing veracity for the past few years.

Predictions were that, by 2020, 50% of the UK’s workforce would have flexible and remote working capabilities as part of their employment, with many working from their home office full-time. But circumstances change. 2020 saw a much higher number of individuals find themselves working from home than ever could have been forecast.

Still, it comes as no surprise that working from home has become the answer so many people have been looking for.

We’ve been laying the groundwork for stay-at-home work for many years now. While a wealth of online services and solutions have enabled remote working to become a titan of the business landscape, what really supported the development of the home office was day-to-day rituals.

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From watching movies through streaming to ordering clothes and food online, modern culture has slowly been adapting to the idea of a world ruled by online services. The UK, as a community, has shifted its mindset to embrace the remote solutions available to us. We can see the benefits and boosts to efficiency that remote access provides. In turn, it has also created a dramatic increase in interest for all types of home-based activities, including employment.

In recent years, everything has gone online. From doctors to dentists, we live in an era where remote access is becoming normal. Even moving out of 2020, it is thought that as circumstances again shift, remote working will retain much of its current popularity. Now we’ve been forcibly exposed to the home-office environment, many will likely not seek to return to traditional setups.

But if we’re now truly in the work-from-home era, we need to be sure we’re ready for the unique challenges the home office environment brings. This blog looks at the best home-office tech for 2020 to help support your transition.

eFax Home-office Technology

Fax retains a specific significance in the B2B community, despite its advanced age. Statistics sourced by eFax demonstrate the sustained power of fax technology in the commercial environment — particularly when it comes to health, legal, and financial documentation and agreements.

The many benefits of fax — from security advantages to convenience — cultivate its continued necessity. However, fax machines are not ideal home office tech for 2020. While they are old-fashioned and outdated as hardware units, their biggest problems come from costs. Expensive to own, expensive to run, and expensive to maintain — often for a very minimal amount of input – they’re big and cumbersome machines you don’t want cluttering your finite home office space.

This fact leads businesses to one of the best home-office tech available in 2020: eFax online fax solutions. eFax takes fax and digitises the process. You can use the service to send and receive fax documents through your mobile phone or computer. You don’t need a fax machine to send fax anymore — your digital devices are the fax machine. In 2020, when remote working is so essential, it enables the continuation of faxing when fax machines are largely inaccessible.

Online Conferencing Software

Even in our digital age of emails and text messages, there is immense value in face-to-face communication. It allows us to be efficient in conveying long-form information; it also allows us to build relations, connect and read body language. With home-office work, face-to-face becomes nearly impossible, but there are ways to replicate the same experience long-distance.

Conference calling is not a new technology. Skype revolutionised the system and took the idea mainstream. Since then though, Skype has become more of a personal tool, similar to Apple Facetime. For practical business applications, it’s very limited. You need to download the software and keep it updated. You also need sign-in information, and its functionality is not particularly versatile.

When it comes to home-business technology, 2020 has some far more adaptive and sustainable offerings. Zoom has perhaps become the most famous, although other offerings may be preferable for your business. Zoom has been noted to have a number of vulnerabilities when it comes to data security and data sharing.

Whichever service you opt for, just make sure you choose one. Online conference calling is essential for maintaining valuable communication platforms during the remote-work era.

Cloud-Based Document Collaboration Home Working Tools

Google Drive and Microsoft 365 are two home office tech tools you need to be aware of if you’re working remotely and need to collaborate on projects. They are cloud-based systems that allow you to create text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that can be accessed from anywhere and edited by multiple individuals. It’s the ultimate in online work collaboration. Imagine having a document on your table at work, which everyone gathers around, making changes. This is what these solutions offer, except they offer them remotely.

But Google Docs and Microsoft 365 aren’t the only essential collaborative tools you need for home-office work. We’ve already outlined conferencing communication, but this is not the ideal situation for all forms of work connectivity. Having a conference call — even if it’s just one-to-one — is going to be disruptive and inconvenient if occurring regularly. You need ways to collaborate with your team quickly and effectively without being intrusive; ways that are also more efficient than services like email.

Applications like WhatsApp have become popular within remote-working communities, but this system has limitations and is only really suitable for small groups. The undisputed champion of 2020 home-office collaborative communication is tech solution Slack. An online chat portal, it allows businesses to develop direct message text chats across a series of channels and message boards. It helps keep work focused, communication flowing, and remote workers connected.

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Web Development Solutions

Website use has skyrocketed during the work-from-home era. Now more than ever, businesses and consumers alike are reliant on online solutions. To take advantage of available opportunities, businesses need to be adaptive in the web services they offer, and the online availability of their business.

Two million UK businesses still do not own even a website. That’s around 33% of all British enterprises, based on the near 6 million SMEs recorded by the FSB. Of those that do, many only have basic systems providing limited functionality and online visibility. For remote working to be successful, your ability to connect with your audience has to be remotely accessible to them as well. Some of the most valuable home-office tech for 2020 are web development tools that enable you to turn your website into a platform that grows your business.

Examples include an on-site eCommerce shopping experience for a retail business, a booking system for a service enterprise, and online cost quoting tools for bespoke solutions. These systems can often be built into your website using integrated technology, or you can have online tools built around them.

When you can’t get your customer in front of you for face-to-face arrangements, these tech tools can make a huge difference in the quality of your business service.

Home-office Productivity Software

A series of tools and solutions enable productivity in a traditional office environment. The home-office environment is no different. The only differences are the tools and solutions used.

You’ll find new obstacles to productivity emerge while working remotely. These include transmissions of files, managing team projects, signing documents, time management, making changes to branding and visual design, and other tasks that were easier in an office. Yet, there is no need for concern about seeing drops in productivity as a result of working from home. There are plenty of powerful home-office tech options designed to support every obstacle you might face. We cannot list them all here, as the list is seemingly endless and depends on the unique productivity obstacles of your business and industry, but here some examples based on a couple of those issues highlighted above:

  • Signatures — Document signatures for everything from payments to supply requests can be essential. E-signatures can replace hand-written signatures to create legally-binding documents. eFax offers an e-signature feature you can use on all important files.
  • Time Management — Concern over people working as intended has always been rife in the remote working community. If people aren’t checking into an office, how do you know they are actually working? Hubstaff is a work tracker that allows you to see staff work in real-time.
  • Team Management— For project management, keeping a birds-eye-view of progress is vital. It can be the difference between success and failure. Work tracking tools like Teamwork or Trello can allow management to oversee task completion, assign new projects and monitor progression.

These examples demonstrate the problems faced and the home-office tech solutions designed to combat them. If you have a productivity issue that needs solving, you won’t have to look far to find a development team working to support you.

Remote-work Scheduling Tools

Without constant reminders in the office — from encounters with individuals and discussions with colleagues — it can become easy to forget commitments like meeting attendance and conference calls. It can also be difficult to get into contact with people to make arrangements. You can’t go and find them in the office anymore, and while you can call or message them, there is certainly an element of connectivity lost.

The solution to both problems is scheduling tools like Google Calendar or Calendly. What these tools allow you to do is to make arrangements and book meetings that also offer reminders sent to your computer and phone. For example, with Calendly, you can select times you are available, people can book in using those times, and then you’ll both be alerted about the upcoming meeting. It makes connectivity easy and straightforward without the risk of our forgetful nature impacting work activity.

Another simple yet powerful tool for scheduling is Doodle Poll. This system allows you to establish a series of dates and times for a group of people to connect. You can invite all individuals involved in a meeting to the Doodle Poll, where they can select what dates and times work for them. With varying availability, this allows everyone to easily align their schedules for the perfect meeting time.

eFax is essential home office tech for 2020. Sign up today for your free no-obligation trial and get access to business-boosting remote working features including digital faxing, e-signatures, document management services and more.

Cyber Security: Common Threats for Businesses in 2020

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

It’s a sad fact of modern business that cyber security continues to pose major risks to prospects. Cyber criminals are more active than ever, with around 90% of UK businesses being the victim of attempted attacks; many of which prove successful. Attacks can be absolutely devastating, with hackers sometimes causing millions of pounds in damages.

The methods vary, but it’s almost always the same target: your communications infrastructure. The most valuable commodity in the digital hacking world these days is personal data and business information. If criminals and cyber attackers can access this through your communication channels, they can reap the rewards.

So, what are the latest developments in cyber attacks when it comes to communication? What are the new cyber security threats for businesses in 2020, and how can you put a stop to them? The guidance from our technical experts here at eFax aims to help support organisations facing cyber vulnerability.

 
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Emails Are Still Very Vulnerable

Email remains one of the most popular forms of digital communication in the world. Figures suggest around 125 billion business emails are sent every single day — and that number is only rising. Far from being a comfort that communication is more free-flowing than ever, cybersecurity experts will find this notion alarming. By definition, email is a very insecure system. The technology centres around a series of methodologies that make it very difficult to secure. From challenges protecting methods in transit to verification of senders, there are so many issues with email that it warrants its very own blog. If you think about it, everything you do online registers to your email in some way. How many opportunities are there for hackers to learn your details, crack your password and access your account? This is something we will talk about in more detail soon. For now, though, take our words as experts in technology that emails are highly vulnerable. And if you won’t take our word, listen to the data. In 2019, Microsoft reported on over a billion hacked email accounts known throughout the industry, belonging to private individuals and business organisations. This means that roughly one-third of all internet users have a compromised email account. What happens if your email account becomes vulnerable? All your sensitive data shared to and from the account becomes available to hackers. Financial data is discovered and personal information accessed. Company secrets become public knowledge. This happened to Sony Pictures in what became one of the most infamous email hacks in history. Masses of information was stolen and shared publicly after hackers infiltrated Sony’s email systems. Dirty laundry was aired, and Sony took a massive hit in terms of reputation and financially. None of this would have happened if they had transmitted their data more securely than email. The executives at Sony appeared to learn from this lesson. Instead of email, they turned to fax. The idea was simple. Pivot away from digital technology, return to analogue routes that are considered “unhackable” and keep data secure. But the problem was not actually with digital technology at all. It was just with email. Emails are vulnerable to hacking, but that is not true of all technology. The move to fax opened up several security threats that could again prove challenging for Sony. Fax hardware communications are not encrypted, which makes the transmission of data very insecure. The physical nature of documents also stops them being protected for unauthorised viewing and makes for easy dissemination. Fax machines were not the answer to this problem. But what is? If you can’t email and you can’t fax, how do you send communication effectively without risking hacking vulnerabilities? The answer is dedicated cloud-based technology. Cloud-technology is an upgrade on email servers. Cloud systems provide much more secure data transmission through high-level encryption. The information is also transmitted internally between different contacts within the same cloud system, rather than through different servers, means it’s much harder for messages to be compromised. For example, eFax cloud-faxing is a cloud-based system. If you and your recipient use eFax, the document you send stays within our servers. There is no weak link in the chain, as there is with email. Emails bounce around from server to server until they reach you, while eFax is direct. Imagine taking a flight straight from one airport to another, compared to travelling over a series of several connecting flights. On each connection, you have the chance for problems — lost luggage, missed departures, stolen goods at the airport. This analogy works to convey the differences between email vs the cloud. The connecting flights are email, while the direct flight is eFax. The documents sent using cloud-technology also remain digital, removing the vulnerabilities of physical transmission through fax machine hardware. If you want to avoid the risks of email, it’s important to move communications to cloud-based technology like eFax. But there are other benefits to eFax, too. It’s not just about protecting your business from the risks of emails.

The Faxploit Backdoor Cyber Attack

It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. In this case, hackers can teach your old fax machine to give them access to your new IT systems.

Recently, a hacking method was discovered dubbed as the “faxpliot”. It works very simply in practice but can cause nightmares for your business. A fax machine receives information and converts that information into a printable image. It doesn’t ask questions about what it receives — it just does what it is told if the message is compatible. Hackers have realised they can send a fax machine code the hardware believes is an image, but actually gives the hackers access to the fax machine itself.

We know what you are thinking: what’s the worst they can do? Print rude images on your fax machine?

Well, they can actually do a lot of damage. First off, they can take control of your machine, stopping other inbound and outbound fax and slowing your operation down. However, this is not the primary reason hackers attack your fax machine. The fax machine has no firewall or antivirus — basically, in terms of modern data security, it is useless. It cannot stop malicious programs from activating within the system. Once they’ve gained access to your fax machine, hackers can follow network connections from your machine into your other IT systems, such as your business computers and servers. Because the malicious code is already in the system, the network isn’t going to notice (unless your system is very advanced — we’re talking MI5 levels of technology, here).

The fax machine effectively becomes an unlocked backdoor through which hackers can enter. Using this form of cyber attack, hackers can compromise cyber security and get into your systems to steal data, cause damage, plant spyware, ransomware and do much, much more.

But how do you combat this new cyber security threat if you need to fax?

The problem with faxploit, as opposed to other cybersecurity threats, is it exploits old hardware. This makes it very difficult to protect against, as fax machines were not designed to be part of the digital age. They are simply not as adaptive and responsive to 21st-century threats from cyber attacks. When faxpliot was discovered, researchers managed to design a patch to stop the code they identified as a cyber threat from running. This patch, however, only provides a solution to a specific computer script and hackers simply develop new ones. The way fax machines operate means there is no real way to solve the problem.

Instead, you need to look at ways to send a fax without a fax machine. eFax online fax solutions enable complete fax functionality using computers and phones — devices that can be protected by modern security protocols. There is no need for fax hardware at all. You can keep faxing and ditch fax machines today. With the threat of cyber attacks looming, moving to eFax can give you the confidence to carry on sending essential fax without worrying about the implications of owning an outdated fax machine.

Our cloud-based technology removes yet another major risk for your business security. And we’re still not done.

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Sophisticated and Coordinated Phishing Attacks

Phishing attacks are certainly nothing new. The concept is basic in principle and has been around for many years. Hackers pretend to be legitimate organisations to obtain details like passwords or credit card information for identity theft. Most people are clued up to this and can spot a phishing attack a mile away, but now hackers are adapting to awareness and seeing an unsettlingly high success rate according to statistics. So what’s new? It is the complexity of attacks that is causing problems, as no one is really prepared for the level of commitment people are now putting into their phishing attempts. Email is often the target, and what hackers will do as part of this cyber attack are things like setting up fake accounts under the same name as a co-worker or boss. They’ll also replicate websites to look identical to tools they know your businesses use. It’s effectively a con-job where they convince you the interaction is genuine. It isn’t a thinly veiled disguise anymore — we’re talking Sherlock-Holmes level subterfuge. Cloud-technology removes the ambiguity of messages. The direct contact that comes from a message sent through cloud systems like eFax means the communication is always going to be genuine. Take, for example, another cloud-based tool, Slack. Slack is a messaging tool that you access via a specific login system. Once in, you can send direct messages to other people like an SMS service. However, it’s always clear who you are being messaged by. It’s not a random mobile number claiming to be somebody they might not be or an email message that appears to be from your boss but isn’t. People cannot fake the account sending the message. The only way to access message boards is to be part of your organisation, be assigned a defining username, and given access to conversation channels. A restricted messaging system completely removes the chance of phishing attacks taking place. You’re never in a position where you don’t know if the sender is actually your colleague. eFax — and many other systems — do the same thing via the cloud. You are all connected by a validated internal system. Identification becomes impossibly easy, which means getting tricked becomes impossibly difficult.

The Power of Cloud Tech: Protecting Your Business from Cyber Security Threats

What you’ll notice about these three major problems is they’re all targeting out-of-date systems built before the digital age exploded. They were not fundamentally designed to face the challenges of modern data security. At the time of their inception, the cybersecurity threats just didn’t exist.

But that isn’t the case for cloud technology.

Cloud tech is not the newest solution, but its rise to prominence only happened around 2005, making it far newer than systems like email and fax. The architecture cloud systems are built on was developed during a period when we had a much better understanding of cyber security threats, which means at the core of cloud technology is a structure designed to protect against problems.

To use another analogy, imagine systems like email and fax are medieval civilisations that have never been attacked. They built interlinking villages that offered flexible trading and free-flowing culture. It was easy to go from one village to the other. Then the Vikings attack and the villages had no way to defend themselves because they weren’t prepared. Cloud technology is built on the history of defeats. It’s the villages that built walls and fortifications to keep out invaders — the ones that stopped letting just anyone in.

Build a fortress around your business and stop cybersecurity invaders stealing and destroying what’s yours. Introduce cloud technology and protect yourself from threats to your communication channels.

Cybersecurity threats will remain a risk for businesses into 2020 and far beyond. Now is the time to act to protect your company and develop cloud-based systems to fend off the most dangerous threats. eFax online fax is cloud-hosted software that features high levels of encryption and data protection solutions.

Going Global: How to Expand Business Internationally

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

Are you eager to set up an international business plan? It’s not for the fainthearted. Before you go any further, consider this sage advice from experts who have been there before.

It is not uncommon to see small business enterprises from the UK trading with customers in countries like the United States, Canada, India, China and many nations across Europe. Businesses reaching out to global markets is nothing new, but may not be something your business has yet taken advantage of.

There are plenty of reasons for going global, including access to a new market, a chance to scale up business activities, protecting rights to intellectual property overseas, and developing new business contact relationships and networks.

However, once we’ve concerned ourselves with the why of global expansion, we have to think about the how.

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Expanding internationally is not a straightforward task for any business. There are lots of influential factors to consider that affect how you start a business in a new region of the world. Almost any budding international business can overcome the hurdles of globalisation and enjoy the advantages and opportunities that selling in another country represents — but only if the process is handled with proper understanding.

Your expansion journey can be as successful as your major competitors, or it can be a disastrous failure; the difference is often about the information you absorb, avoiding assumptions and carefully considering strategy.

This article is just one of many resources we recommend you absorb before selling your products and services internationally. Always take on as much information as you can before you make this incredible but potentially risky business expansion decision — be it through business contacts, handbooks, books, webinars, and so on.

Identify Your International Customer Base

Every market has something different to offer businesses — from unique opportunities to cultural differences that create very specific demands. For example, you’ll find that in Japan, huge opportunities exist for manufacturing enterprises, while in Australia most of the countries GDP is built around the service sector and tourism.

It’s important to be aware of these differences, as well as market saturation and availability of trade.

The US is known to have the largest economy in the world, with China following behind. Just because these two powerhouse economies are wealthy, however, doesn’t mean they are the best fit for your company. If their markets aren’t buying what you are selling — or there are too many competing businesses — it doesn’t matter how much money there is, you are unlikely to see a piece of it. Unless that is, you have a very aggressive marketing strategy and a budget to match.

Instead, a smaller international market could be exactly what you are looking for. Prospects may be far superior in regions with less cash, simply because you are offering something that appeals to the market and there is room for it. The best way to secure your optimum destination for international business expansion is through extensive market research.

Determine the Cost-Effectiveness of International Expansion

There is always new money in international markets, that much is without doubt. However, what you must consider is the ROI. Cost analysis is crucial at this stage. Look at what it will cost you to open up business overseas and what kind of growth you can expect from it. You can then compare this to similar investments in domestic products, and determine whether or not the rewards are worth the investment and risk.

Why do businesses operate internationally when their domestic markets are so large? Often, it’s because the ROI of moving to a more diverse range of income sources is worth the cost of entry. But this is not always the case. Before proceeding, you need to know if you can compete with other businesses, and achieve success, or if the amount of resources involved in international expansion is going to hinder your business prospects.

Test Products and Services in Your International Markets

You’ve identified your target market, and you’ve legitimised this opportunity as financially viable. But, that still doesn’t mean you’re ready to face international expansion. As with any good market research strategy and overall business plan, you should always consider product testing.

You need proof of concept before you invest in full-scale international operations. When looking at expansion, company policy should always make sure sales are actually viable. The market may exist on paper, but do people really want what you are offering?

Use whatever resources you have at your disposal to market test. Market testing can range from the introduction of products and services to a select group of individuals to speaking to network contracts or arranging meetings with potential investors to get their feedback.

Get Culturally Aware of Foreign Markets

When you expand into new regions, you will face new cultures. Cultural differences may be the driving factor behind your international expansion in the first place, but they do present their own obstacles. Business owners should be aware of how different cultural norms will impact business interaction. When trying to generate leads, you mustn’t attempt to force your own ideas on your market, but instead, adapt to the way they work.

For example, in China, B2B relationships are built around very particular practices of etiquette and loyalty. Professionalism is highly valued, as are traditional formalities. Punctuality and preparedness are essential, and a lack of either is seen as disrespectful. To build networks in China, you need to be ready to put a lot of effort into developing complex and long-term business relationships. China is not — generally speaking — a culture of quick meetings and one-off deals!

Of course, you may not be considering China, but this example serves a purpose wherever you decide to expand internationally. To be successful and find business opportunities, you need to do as the locals do. For this reason, it’s essential to build awareness and understanding of foreign markets and a sales team that can deliver the results you require.

Acquire the Necessary Technology for International Business

Just as different business landscapes have different cultures, so to do they have different software solutions and technology to manage their companies. Your business needs to incorporate this technology to achieve vital connectivity and communication. If your technology is incompatible with other international businesses, then you’ll find barriers to trade. These barriers, however, are avoidable. All you have to do is learn what technology is used by your new clients, consumers and suppliers, and ensure you are using this technology too.

In Japan, for example, fax remains crucial for trade. Over half of households still have a fax machine, and almost all businesses use them. If you don’t have a fax machine and you want to conduct business in Japan, you’ll struggle. This doesn’t mean you have to buy outdated hardware, though. eFax online fax solutions let you send and receive fax from your computer and smartphone, revolutionising fax while remaining connected.

As with our example, you don’t need to accept poor technological solutions if there are better and more viable options (like online fax) that allow you to do the same job. Meeting technological demands is not simply about doing exactly what your new market does, but instead securing free-flowing working relationships.

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Understand the Legal Processes Involved in Expanding Your Business Overseas

When you go into business domestically, you have to follow a number of rules and regulations. From registering your company name with HMRC to paying VAT taxes, there are lots of legal elements and government agencies that business leaders need to be aware of before they can set up a company.

International business is no different. Just because you are established domestically, you do not have the right to establish yourself wherever you like. If you decide you want to trade overseas, you’ll need to go through the relevant legal processes required by the local government. Requirements vary from country to country, which is why we suggest you seek legal advice from an expert in your chosen target market.

Establish Your International Business Profile

You’re going to be doing business in a new country, which means you can’t rely on your domestic marketing plan to reach your new customer base. Your business — whether you are service providers or product retailers — must develop a sales methodology that allows you to engage with target markets.

What does this mean? It means not only building a unique market strategy based on your new market’s culture but also forming a core for your new market to operate around. This core includes the development of an internationally available website and social media profiles. UK-based platforms are not going to be appealing, and potentially not even visible, to international markets.

You may also need to rebrand your business overseas if your current brand name is already taken or does not suit the market culture. Many famous business organisations have rebranded for overseas customers, such as Walkers Crisps, marketed as Lays in the US.

Develop a Local Team for International Expansion

This team is sometimes known as a “beachhead team”. The idea is to support your business’s expansion into an international market; you create a team temporarily dedicated to overseeing project development while a fully-realised international team is established. The beachhead team is often built from existing staff.

This team can be based locally with your new market, or they can be remote and work out of HQ. However, they’ll do things like manage customer relations, recruit overseas team members, work within the appropriate time zones, and be the essential hub of communication and control for your new international company elements.

Separating a team when you expand your business internationally is very important. It allows you to quickly develop and grow your international operations without having to maintain a balance between overseas and domestic business management. It is suggested that members of your current senior management team head up this project, as they’ll have the power and authority to drive change and take advantage of expansion opportunities without being as heavily restricted as other members of staff lower down the business hierarchy.

Secure the must-have communication tool for expanding your business internationally with eFax online fax solutions. Sign up today and gain instant access to essential fax communication platforms that can propel your company to great international success.

Is Zoom Safe? How to Deal with Zoom Vulnerabilities

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

Zoom is seeing an explosion in popularity. In 2020 thus far, we have seen massive growth in the online video-conferencing tool. Google Trend analytics can help us understand the scale of Zoom’s meteoric rise. Interest in the brand grew by 1900% in April 2020 as opposed to February of the same year.

Zoom has become one of these most-used pieces of software on the planet. In December 2019, the company recorded ten million calls per day through the service. As of April 2020, that number is 200,000 million.

It goes without saying that many people are using Zoom. It’s the go-to conference system for businesses across the world, and also a very popular platform for private calls.

But why?

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Why Is Zoom so Popular?

Convenience is the key ingredient in Zoom’s success. Where other video-conference platforms often require sign ups, Zoom capitalised on a market of accessibility by making it incredibly easy for individuals to join a call without hassle. The host of the call requires an account, but viewers do not. A hyperlink join system allows people to enter conferences very easily and quickly. They can opt to launch from the app or view via a browser. The Zoom service is very organised and simple, which is great for arranging large meetings without concern for those lacking IT skills. Connectivity and quality are also high, which leaves people satisfied with calls and ready to use the service again.

Other systems offer this, but Zoom was one of the industry pioneers. The result is that early adopters used word of mouth to spread the popularity of Zoom. It’s not unique in its offerings anymore, but it laid the foundations early, allowing it to take pole position in 2020.

Is Zoom Safe? Why People Are Worried about Zoom

“Is Zoom safe” is a commonly searched phrase. Consumers are apprehensive about using Zoom software for fear of security issues. The concerns come from legitimate thought processes.

Zoom’s convenience is unusual in 21st-century technology. In a world of high-security, major data threats, and constant reminders of a need to protect our online rights and privacy, it seems odd such an open video-conferencing tool is available.

Unfortunately, while you’d expect these fears to be rational but unfounded due to measures taken by Zoom to secure their software, this is not the case. While Zoom is certainly a trustworthy business in itself, the Zoom software does have some very major vulnerabilities that compromise its safety.

This news will be of particular concern to businesses that use the platform for meetings that involve the sharing of data. Put simply, Zoom is not secure enough to provide the protection you need to avoid problems such as non-compliance with GDPR.

What Are the Common Security Issues with Zoom?

The openness of Zoom — the convenience of the product — has led to its undoing. The big security problems of Zoom were laid bare in April 2020, when 500,000 hacked user account details were sold on the dark web.

This issue increased already mounting problems with the Zoom service.

It was highlighted by security experts that Zoom does not feature end-to-end call encryption, despite the fact the company has claimed in the past that it does. End-to-end encryption means data transmitted during a call is protected by encryption at all times, but this is not the case for Zoom. There are times when data is not actually encrypted, such as if you were to join a call via cellular data. Zoom, as the provider of your call, also possesses the ability to decrypt your call’s data and access it, which means a breach at Zoom would leave your information vulnerable. Given that half-a-million account details were recently stolen, there is reason to be concerned about this possibility.

Another very real vulnerability is the threat of Zoombombing. Zoom operates by setting up meeting room IDs that you join via a hyperlink. Again, all part of the accessibility of the platform. The problem is that hackers and cybercriminals have figured out how to join live calls. All they have to do is work out what your Zoom link is and they can enter your conference. Using stolen IDs, they can also ensure these aren’t random guesses either, and so can target specific organisations.

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Zoom issues. Reports have circulated of malware programs that can record conversations and text messages without detection, and that hackers can access previously run meeting recordings archived in Zoom cloud software.

In a summary of Zoom vulnerabilities, Patrick Wardle, a former National Security Agency employee, stated: “Though Zoom is incredibly popular, it has a rather dismal security and privacy track record.”

Why Zoom Vulnerabilities Are a Problem for Your Business

Many, many businesses are using Zoom. It’s massive. Even the British government is convening cabinet meetings through Zoom — despite criticism from security experts who cite the major flaws outlined above.

The problem we have here is each issue combined creates a major risk to data protection and data security. The current digital era has put data protection under the spotlight. We’ve seen businesses under fire for data breaches, huge fines imposed for non-compliance, and the introduction of the GDPR — the most complex set of data protection laws to date.

Now is not the time for any business to risk data security, but that is exactly what Zoom does.

For business catch-ups and casual conversations between employees, Zoom is convenient. However, the moment sensitive data comes into play — from discussing client information to sharing internal documents either through chat or via screen sharing — the platform goes from a quick way to chat to a risky practice that could result in data breaches.

The sale of those 500,000 accounts on the dark web is perhaps the biggest worry. These are just the compromised accounts we know of. If any of your business accounts are amongst them — or any other hacked accounts — it gives hackers easy access to your meetings. In an article published on Mashable, the security research lead Dov Lerner at Sixgill — an organisation that monitors the dark web — said, “These credentials could [sic] be used for corporate or personal eavesdropping, identity theft, and other nefarious actions. There’s a number of ways a malicious actor could use these stolen accounts.”

However you frame it, Zoom is creating problems for your business.

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Zoom Vulnerabilities: How Can eFax Help?

The utility of Zoom is difficult to ignore. It’s become so immensely popular because it is so immensely useful. We understand that advising all businesses stay away from Zoom is going to prove challenging — and most likely impossible. The software has become integrated into many different operations. During 2020, with such economic turbulence and business unrest, now is not the time for businesses to consider changing their entire modus operandi for online conferencing.

Instead, we’re offering a suggestion that allows you to keep using Zoom while better protecting your data. We’re suggesting you incorporate eFax into your meeting strategies to improve data security.

How would this work?

eFax is a tool that allows you to send and receive digital fax documents over the internet using mobile phone apps or your web browser. It’s a great way to share visual data and files quickly. It’s also secure. Our platform has high-level encryption and features a range of access controls. It keeps documents away from prying eyes.

You can use eFax to transmit documents containing sensitive company or personal information without having to share them through your Zoom meetings. Everyone gets to see what they need to, but the document itself is not exposed to the risky practices related to Zoom conference calls.

With eFax working in conjunction with Zoom, you get the best of both worlds. A popular and accessible video-conference platform familiar to both staff and clients, and a data-sharing tool that enables safe and secure document transmission.

Other Benefits of eFax for Businesses in 2020

During the era of Zoom and remote working, integrating eFax into your business communication structure can have a few other important benefits. These include:

  • Access to Fax — Fax machine hardware is not suited for home-office work. It is immobile and expensive. eFax allows you to easily establish at-home fax solutions that keep your fax communication uninterrupted.
  • Large File Sharing — Struggling to send large files to colleagues or customers? Email servers often let you down. eFax allows you to send files up to 3 GB in a single message.
  • Electronic Signatures — If your business requires signatures to ensure work progresses, long-distance communication can make life difficult. Our e-signature tool allows you to legally sign documents and maintain healthy workflows.

Alternatives to Zoom

What if you are in a position to move away from Zoom? You may have the flexibility to look into new platforms, or you may be considering solutions for future strategy once you are in a more stable position.

A recommendation we have is Google Hangouts. Google Hangouts has some disadvantages, it must be admitted. Google has its privacy controversy, which in turn leads to concerns over the software’s lack of end-to-end encryption, similar to Zoom. If you can look past that, however, and put your faith in Google to secure your data, the brand does have a great security track record. Despite being one of the largest digital companies in business today, it has never seen a compromise of data so big as Zooms, or like rivals Yahoo. This lack of external infiltration keeps a lot of your private data safe and minimises risk.

Google Hangouts, like Zoom, is super convenient. You share meetings via a simple hyperlink and can have many individuals attend a call. Both platforms have scalable payment structures starting from free systems for small-scale business calls right the way to premium accounts for larger enterprises.

When looking to remove Zoom vulnerabilities and replace your video conferencing software, you do certainly have options that are not only more secure, but also just as useful for your business.

eFax has all the tools you need to secure better communication during these unprecedented times of remote-working. Sign up today to access all the powerful features our solutions have to offer.

How to Use Remote Working to Cut Small Business Costs

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

2020 saw a significant shift in the employment industry. For the first time, remote working became a necessity for millions, rather than an optional tool for the flexibility offered by a select few employers. Figures for work-from-home teams skyrocketed for small businesses and remote employment became the new normality. Yet as the dust settles, and people start to return to traditional office space, will we return to the way things were — or is this an opportunity for your business to grow? Remote working has many promising advantages, but perhaps most attractive of all is the ability to cut small business costs.

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The Rise of Remote Working Has Changed Business

The cultural shift to remote working in 2020 was born out of necessity, but that does not mean it won’t have a huge impact.

In 2019, only around 30% of the UK work population worked from home. The report, documented by government-back ONS (Office of National Statistics) suggests many of these weren’t full-time remote workers either. To be counted in the total percentage of workforce included in the data, they only had to have worked from home once.

For most, working from home once was not an option — it was something many small business enterprises had not considered or didn’t think was viable. However, as a business owner, you may now be witnessing the ways remote work can benefit your business first hand.

With remote working a necessity, instead of looking to ways of surviving until traditional environments reopened, 2020 became the year when an opportunity for small business setups arose to experience the advantages of remote work.

By being forced to adapt, many have had their eyes opened.

Cutting Small Business Costs through Remote Work

Working from home has frequently been reported as a powerful way to reduce costs for any small business. These reports aren’t new – some date back over a decade, to a time where systems like cloud technologies had only just become viable. The cost savings for small business enterprises aren’t just short-term; they exist for the long run and can provide almost every business operating today a chance to cut costs without compromising on quality or service. But how can your business save money through remote work?

Top Five Ways to Cut Costs by Working from Home

  • Video Conferencing Instead of Travel — One of the best ways to reduce costs for a business is to introduce video conference calling for meetings. Tools like Zoom allow you to chat with anyone, anywhere. It’s not new technology, but new developments in systems make it far easier, smoother, intuitive and adaptive. It’s now possible to have company-wide meetings online without any trouble. This means you can cut back on travel and commuting costs without sacrificing communication.
  • Reducing Costs of Office Upkeep — Offices are expensive business assets. You have to pay rents, bills and maintenance fees. The costs quickly wrack up and become one of your largest expenses — especially for a small business. Removing the need for an office space can dramatically affect your bottom line.
  • Save Money with Paperless Practice — Working from home forces your communication by files and documents to become electronic. Paper is just too inefficient. This introduction removes the need for expensive hardware like printers and fax machines and instead points you towards much more cost-effective solutions like eFax online faxing.
  • Stop Paying for Food Expenses and Coffee — It sounds ridiculous, but even the costs of coffee can put dents in profit margins. Free food and drink at the office can create massive money sinks for small business enterprises. Working from home, your team can easily source their own food and coffee, reducing these expenses. If you want to be seen as supportive, you can provide a small budget per person to cover lunch costs, but this is unlikely to be anywhere near what you’d pay in a normal office environment, and could really save money for your business.
  • Reduce the Amount of Sick Leave — Studies show that remote workers take less sick days. There are two main theories as to why this happens. The first is that less contact with individuals in the office reduces the chance of picking up viral infections. The other is that mental health plays a role. Working from home can help improve work-life balance, which makes employees happier and healthier, reducing the chance of stress-related sick leave. Either way, less sick leave results in a more cost-effective business.
  • Cut the Costs of Work Clothing Supply — This element will not impact all types of business, but some operations require individuals to have branded clothing or uniforms. Working from home, these become unnecessary and can be removed as expenses for your business.

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Cost-Saving Technologies to Develop Home Working Practice

With the cost benefits of remote working clear as day, business owners will want to look at ways to develop long-term remote working practices that offer sustained reductions in costs. So how do you make sure you keep enjoying the advantages of remote work? When it comes to ways to reduce expenses, the simple act of working from home enables money to be saved. However, for home-office work to be viable, you need to create a business infrastructure that supports it.

The answer is very simple, and we’ve already touched upon it in this article:

Cloud technology.

Cloud technology is an innovation of the 21st-century that slowly but surely changed the business landscape forever, and has become the most influential technology to spread across the entire commercial landscape since the advent of the computer. The usefulness of cloud technology for remote work is all in the way it is fundamentally designed to operate.

At the start of the new millennium, we were introduced to the digital revolution. Amazing new software and hardware came into existence that turbo-charged the way we completed tasks. From project management to monitoring finances, we could dramatically improve work efficiency by using technology. The problem with this way of working was all the technology was in-house. It was stored on business computers and maintained by onsite servers. If you wanted to achieve the amazing things technology offered from home, you needed to bring all that technology home with you, which was expensive, took up loads of space, and just wasn’t possible — certainly not for all employees.

But cloud technology makes it possible.

Cloud technology is all the advanced systems you use but stored on somebody else’s server. Instead of storing systems locally, you use the internet to access them. The data-speeds of the web are now so fast there is no discernible difference in functionality and performance between accessing a piece of software on your server and accessing software housed on a server thousands of miles away.

For a long time, the cloud was not viable outside of data backups and storage. However, as technology has aged and become more accessible to program developers, and the demand for the platform has increased, more and more solutions have become available. You can now find all software solutions provided through the cloud. From eFax cloud faxing, which lets you remove fax machines and send fax online, to cloud accounting software that lets you manage business finances over the web, the opportunities to integrate cloud systems are endless.

We no longer need local software to perform essential business tasks. Instead, we can move to the cloud, which also offers the benefits of added security, backups and scalability.

What this means for remote work is it has become almost universally viable. In the digital age — where we are reliant on computer software to complete work — there are very few areas of task management where you cannot find a cloud system to support your goals. Individuals don’t need to come into the office to complete their work for a business. They can access the systems they need through personal computers from their home office instead.

Cloud software is key to any business that wants to take advantage of the remote-working revolution and cut costs. Make sure you build a full awareness of the cloud solutions available to you, and you’ll soon find ways to reduce business costs through remote work.

With cloud systems as a base of work competition, you can develop systems to support your work — including communications platforms and apps that monitor work completed. For more information on supportive technology, be sure to read our blog on the best home-office tech in 2020 for remote work.

Remote Work and Physical Business Presence

Some industries require a physical presence.

From retail and hospitality to manufacturing and production, sometimes it is impossible to take a small business completely remote. But, if you’re seeking to reduce business costs by working from home, you can still apply the advice highlighted above to sections of your operation.

Management strategies and administrative tasks don’t need to be run from the warehouse where they are implemented, for example. One way to save costs in industries that require a traditional style of work is to adapt processes that can be carried out from home without compromising those that can’t.

The cloud technologies mentioned in this article allow business owners to not only connect with third-parties but also their staff. Other examples include ideas like using eFax to send internal documents from your home office to a storage facility or collaborating on supply order forms remotely with those in a warehouse checking stock via cloud-based accounting tools.

Change the way you think about remote work. Take advantage of the tools available to help you, and you can save large sums of money by being a business that works from home. eFax works to help you achieve this goal. Offering cloud-based technology that includes document management systems, e-signatures and, of course, business-to-business faxing functionality, eFax is a vital tool for your work-from-home business. Sign up today!

Is Fax Still Used? Why There is a Future for Fax Technology

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

It’s old, unwanted and taking up space, but fax isn’t going anywhere. It might not have the gleaming future it had in the 70s, but the future of fax is still bright. Today, eFax looks at why this technology just won’t die.

Why Fax Isn’t Dead

Fax in the modern day is still prevalent. While usage has decreased since the 70s and 80s, many businesses still fax. Despite recent attempts to cut numbers down further, fax isn’t going anywhere. Its valuable benefits make it irreplaceable technology.

The Future of the Fax

Fax has a place in the modern workplace, but fax machines do not. Their disadvantages create massive problems for businesses they shouldn’t have to deal with. Luckily, they don’t have to, because the future of fax technology is eFax online fax. Online fax enables users to send fax without the need for outdated hardware.

future-for-fax-technology-with-cloud-faxing

The State of Fax

In early 2020, we got some news. It was revealed that major fax service providers, including eFax, were expecting to see increased market shares of over double what they currently have. For those outside the corporate world, this might come as a surprise — surely nobody sends fax anymore? But anyone in the business environment is likely aware of the current reliance of fax for commercial organisations.

eFax previously wrote a blog about important fax statistics. We encourage you to read it for all the important details, but the key takeaways are that fax machines sales are still in the millions, with billions of fax documents transmitted every single year. Major economies across the world — from the USA to Japan — use fax machines regularly. In non-commercial environments, fax is certainly dead and has been since the early 00s, but even in the most modern of business sectors, you’ll still find day-to-day use of fax.

Why Fax Is Still Used?

We’ve established that fax is not dead. But why not? If you look at fax technology on paper, the fact it retains such an important place in business culture is a bit mind-boggling. Fax as a technology was invented in the 1840s and popularised in the 1970s. Other technology popular during the hay-day of the fax machine includes floppy disks, cassette tapes, and Atari games consoles. Far superior inventions surpassed every one of these technologies and sent them the way of the dodo. So why then does fax remain so many decades later?

The simple answer is, there is just no replacing fax.

Fax has a few significant benefits over any other kind of document communication format. Their highly visual nature makes them easy to dissect and extract information quickly, and the nature of sending image files improves the legal authenticity of the content. As a result, you’ll find industries like healthcare, legal, and finance all rely on fax just as much in the present day as they did thirty years ago. And this reliance has a trickle-down effect. If large companies and organisations require fax, it means those working with them do as well. This fact has resulted in a web of fax connectivity; a web in which many, many businesses have become entangled.

The Problem with Traditional Fax

We use the word “entangled” as though the use of fax is a bad thing. Why when it’s so beneficial to many industries, is it a bad thing to fax? At eFax, we’re passionate about great fax service. We’d never suggest fax was bad; we think fax is fantastic and that every business should use it. But, while we love fax, we do have a problem with fax machines.

Fax is a communication system, whereby visual documents are sent between two parties. One way to send a fax — the method most commonly associated with fax — is to use a fax machine. Fax machines are the issue. They are an outdated technology that doesn’t belong in the modern workplace. They’re expensive, inefficient — and inflexible. They’re also highly destructive when it comes to data security.

Do Traditional Fax Problems Threaten the Future of Fax?

The issues with fax machines have not gone unnoticed.

Organisations like the NHS have committed to “axe the fax” movements that promise to eliminate fax machines from the healthcare sector. Other industries are backing their objectives. Many businesses are trying to cut down on the volume of faxes they send. Looking at the data though, we can see targets for axing fax machines are being missed. The NHS has failed to get rid of fax at the rates intended — as have others who have tried to follow in their footsteps. And there is a very simple reason for this — fax is too important to remove. Therefore, efforts to cut it out are invariably going to see problems.

What Is the Future of Fax Technology?

The big mistake businesses and organisations make is identifying fax and fax machines as mutually inclusive technology. They see fax machines as a necessity for fax transmission, but that is no longer true. At eFax, we’re against fax machines, but we’re fully in support of fax. Why? Because we offer a new way to send fax.

The future of fax. Digital fax.

Fax cannot be removed, its value to our society cannot be overstated and its importance will always circumvent any attempts to remove it. But fax machines are old technology and certainly not the future of fax. Digital fax services are the future of fax. They allow for a completely computer-based alternative to fax machines, enabling fax to be sent in much the same way as through a fax machine, but through a secure and versatile modern device — such as smartphone or laptop.

Fax will remain part of the business landscape for years to come — with or without fax machines — because other forms of communication cannot outdo its benefits. The future of the technology though is not more complicated fax machines, but instead a step towards simplification, by integrating fax with more modern devices used to connect business.

Experience the future of fax today. Digital fax technology is at your fingertips. Sign up to eFax to get immediate access to the best fax solutions available.

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How to Send a Fax Without a Fax Machine

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

Fax retains wide-scale use within business, but many companies don’t want to own fax machines anymore — particularly small companies. Is it possible to be part of the fax communication network without actually owning a fax machine?

Sending a Fax without a Fax Machine

Fax machines are not suited to the modern business environment, which means many companies are seeking to remove them. A major barrier to this, however, is fax as a practice remains important. The result is businesses are looking for options to send fax without a fax machine. This may sound like a wild notion, but with eFax, it isn’t.

How to Send a Fax without a Fax Machine

Contrary to what you might believe, fax doesn’t actually require a fax machine. A fax is a piece of visual communication, which means other visual platforms are available — beyond paper — to accommodate it. With eFax online fax, you can now send fax from your computer or phone.

 

fax-machine

Why Would You Want to Send Fax without a Fax Machine?

The fax machine was invented in 1843 — nearly twenty years before Abraham Lincoln was US President, and the same year Charles Dickens published “A Christmas Carol.” The fax machine wasn’t made popular until much later, in the 1970s, but that doesn’t take away from the fact the technology is rapidly approaching the milestone birthday of being two-hundred years old. It would seem bizarre then, for modern businesses to have such technology in the workplace. In an age of automation, smart technology, and increased computing power, using analogue hardware that shares files over copper phone lines would appear to be akin to using a gramophone to play music instead of an iPod.

So, you keep your fax machine.

But that creates more problems. For small businesses, fax machines are often a major irritation. They’re expensive to upkeep, require active phone lines, and take up office space. For businesses in general, fax machines are woefully inefficient for work, due to signal problems, constant absorption of resources, immobility, and the fact they are only usable by one individual at a time. Fax machines also present a litany of data security issues, starting at simple missending of information right down to opening IT network weaknesses that allow your entire computer system to be hacked. Add on top of this, the upcoming ISDN switch off, and you’ll find all the hardware will eventually become obsolete in the UK.

So — you don’t keep your fax machine?

That seems to be the obvious answer given the scale of the problems. But then, how do you fax without a fax machine? Actually, it’s not as difficult as you might think.

How Does eFax Work to Send a Fax without a Fax Machine?

Fax is a new fax technology. It does one very simple thing, and it does it very well: it allows you to send and receive fax documents. But eFax isn’t hardware — it isn’t a fax machine. eFax is a software solution accessed via your computer or smartphone. It’s essentially faxing on a digital device. We call it cloud faxing, online faxing, or digital faxing.

But how does that work if fax is a paper file sent using a fax machine and printed by another fax machine?

Well, that isn’t what fax is. A fax is a document sent in visual form. Often fax will contain a signature or some legally binding element unsuitable for other platforms like email. That, however, doesn’t mean it has to be a hard paper copy. Visual files exist on computers in the form of Jpegs, PDFs, PNGs, and other image formats. These visual files can contain all the information of a paper copy, without the actual paper, which means they can be sent electronically without a fax machine. And, thanks to the eIDAS regulations put forward by the EU that qualify some forms of electronic signature as legally binding, you now don’t need a fax machine to send a legally binding fax document.

eFax presents your business with a solution to paper fax by allowing you to send digital fax. But that doesn’t solve all the problems you might have. What about those businesses that still use fax machines?

Digital fax is not just a system of sending a computer file to another computer. With eFax, you can still maintain connectivity to fax machine hardware. It works very simply. You send a fax document using your online fax service. eFax then takes the digital document you’ve sent (PDF, Jpeg, etc.) and converts it to a format readable by an old-fashioned fax machine. The fax machine then prints it as if sent by another fax machine. You don’t need a fax machine anymore, even if your clients/customers still use one. This system also works in reverse. So if you receive a physical fax, the eFax system converts it to a digital format readable by your device.

It’s intuitive, easy-to-use, and doesn’t require any additional input from your business. The system is entirely automated.

How to Send a Fax without a Fax Machine

Sending a fax without a fax machine couldn’t be easier. You don’t need any training or tutorials, or new hardware to make it work. eFax is available on any device you currently own that can connect to an internet browser — so that’s phones, tablets and computers.

But then what?

Sign in to your account after starting your subscription with us. Then, you go to our fax management portal and start writing your message. You upload your fax as an attachment, just as you would an email. The file can be one that already exists digitally, or you can capture it using a camera or scanner. If you need to sign the document, our e-signature tool helps you do that too. Then all you have to do is put in the recipient’s fax number and send.

That’s it.

You’ve got rid of your fax machine, cut out all the negative consequences of owning the hardware, and sent fax digitally. You can even send a fax through email systems, such as Gmail or Outlook. All you have to do is write your message as an ordinary email with attachments. Then, instead of an email address, you add the recipient’s fax number alongside an exclusive eFax email domain address. The email will be sent through our systems, converted to a fax and sent to whoever it needs to reach. You can also link up your fax number to your email, so any fax sent comes through to your email — making it easy to track all your digital correspondence from one location.

Starting sending fax without a fax machine today. Upgrade your fax systems while keeping hold of essential fax communication with eFax.

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Best Fax Machine 2020: It’s Completely Digital

Posted on by Scott Schweigert

The Best Fax Machine in 2020 Isn’t a Machine

eFax cloud-faxing solutions provide your small business with the functionality of fax machines without actually needing old-fashioned hardware. You can replace your outdated fax machine with your current smartphones and computers, sending and receiving fax from modern devices.

Why Is the Best Fax Machine Not a Fax Machine?

Fax machines as hardware are outdated. They are expensive, resource-intensive, and come complete with a series of other disadvantages that make them not just obsolete, but problematic. Replacing fax machines with digital solutions that enable fax provides your small business with an easy-to-use and effective alternative to legacy hardware.

Businessman touch a screen tablet with printer icon on a virtual panel. Printing office paperwork concept.

Introducing the Best Fax Machine of 2020: Your Mobile Phone (Or Computer)

The best fax machine of 2020 is not the hardware you are used to. Fax machines have been around since the 19th-century and rose to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s as a way of sharing visual documents quickly. Since then, the technology behind fax machines has changed very little. However, that doesn’t mean the methods of sending fax haven’t seen any evolution. While the fax machine hasn’t changed much, digital technology has — and solutions like eFax now exist to send fax without a fax machine. Instead of a fax machine, you can now use eFax solutions to send a fax from your phone or computer.

How Your Phone Becomes a Fax Machine

When you compare your compact mobile phone to a fax machine, you might wonder how the two technologies could ever be transferable. Fax machines are large and bulky pieces of hardware you feed paper into, and that spit paper out — and your phone is, well, a phone.

How does your phone (or computer) become the best fax machine for your business?

eFax technology is available through the internet. You can access our services online via our website or through our mobile application. From either platform, you can upload visual digital documents (such as Jpegs or PDFs) and transmit them as fax files just as if you were feeding a physical document into a fax machine.

The recipient can then see these visual files as attachments on their digital devices. Or — if your recipient uses a traditional fax machine — our system will convert the digital file into a physical one, and allow them to print it. The system also works in reverse. A customer or client can send your business a physical file from their old-fashioned fax machine. eFax solutions will then convert that file into a digital document and display it on your device as if it was uploaded as a computer file.

Why the Best Fax Machine Is on Your Phone

Digital fax is an improvement on fax machines. Consider it the next step in fax technology — just as email improved postal mail. Digital fax offers all the benefits of faxing — including fast access to visual files, submission of legal signatures, and accurately dated correspondence. However, it also comes complete with a host of other advantages not present in traditional fax machines:
  • Document Management Facilities — eFax includes a document management centre available anywhere you have internet access. Here you can view previously sent and received fax files for easy referral and control. You don’t need to bring your paper fax everywhere you go for access requirements. Your fax is always with you.
  • Fax on the Go — Thanks to the ability to access eFax anywhere with a wifi or cellular connection, you can also send and receive fax anywhere. Even the most modern fax hardware is not portable — but eFax is.
  • Paperless Document Access — With digital solutions, your business does not need paper document trails anymore. You can take steps towards a more sustainable and eco-friendly organisation with this new type of fax machine.
  • Multi-User Submission — eFax allows you to send the same fax transmission to many recipients at once, instead of having to resend it over and over again. This feature improves convenience and saves valuable work hours.
  • Multi-Access Channels — Fax machines can only be used by one person at a time. eFax, however, can be used by multiple personal at once, as many users from different devices can connect to the services at the same time.
  • Data Encryption — Fax machines do not protect data transmissions, but eFax does. We encrypt all data sent and support the secure submission of important and sensitive business data.
  • Large Instant File Submission — Using fax machines to send large files takes a long time. You have to feed in all of the pages you want to submit one-by-one. With digital fax, you can upload large documents (up to 3GB) in seconds. Sending large files becomes as simple as sending single pages.

Why Not Keep Using Traditional Fax Machines?

There are numerous reasons why phones and computers are now the best fax machines for 2020. However, their advantages and access to all required fax capabilities are not the only reasons why you should consider them over old-fashioned fax machines. The outdated hardware has numerous detracting factors that mean fax machines are not only lesser to digital services, but also potentially harmful to business operation too. These factors include:

  • High Business Costs — Traditional fax machines require lots of resources, including ink cartridges, paper, maintenance, and their own paid phone lines. Fax machines themselves are also expensive. Even budget options will cost around £200.
  • Increased Risk of Human Error — Fax machines are notorious for the “fat finger problem”. This occurs when somebody misdials and submits a document to the wrong fax number. Misdialled numbers can lead to information being sent where it shouldn’t and breaching data protection. Human error is the primary cause of data breach, with fax playing a major part in that.
  • Easy to Manipulate — Fax machines are old technology and not built for the demands of the 21st-century — however, they do link up to 21st-century hardware through your IT network. Exploits have been discovered that allow hackers to use malicious software to access your computer network using connected fax machines lacking security functions like the firewalls on modern devices.
  • The Upcoming ISDN Switch off — In 2025, British Telecom (BT) will shut commence the ISDN switch off. This removes access to all hardwire landlines; the kind fax machines are reliant on. The result is, fax machines become more difficult and expensive to operate. Switching to eFax now saves on inevitable hassle.
  • Unauthorised Accessibility — When fax documents print out, they become paper files that are easily accessed by unauthorised parties. These documents can also be misplaced, lost or stolen. Even high-value documents get lost accidentally, which means business files are certainly not exempt from mistakes.

The best fax machine in 2020 is your phone or computer, there is no doubt about it. These multifunction devices are all you need to send and receive fax without reliance on outdated hardware. Discover immediate digital fax solutions when you sign up to eFax today!

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