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85 pc of US businesses rely on fax technology: GFI

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Abhigna
New Update

CLEARWATER, USA: GFI Software has announced the results of a new survey about the faxing habits of U.S. office workers, which show that by an overwhelming margin, faxing continues to be an important form of office communication for most businesses.

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The independent blind survey, which polled 1,008 office workers in U.S. organizations ranging from 10 to 500 employees, was conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of GFI Software.

Contradicting the widespread perception that faxing is no longer commonly used, 85 percent of respondents said their business makes use of faxing, and more than half (54 percent) of respondents who use faxing said it is a central part of their daily workflow process for customer, vendor and interdepartmental communications.

"Faxing is a required form of transactional communication in a number of key industries for compliance reasons, but while paper faxing can be risky from a privacy perspective, many people aren't aware that electronic faxing is actually superior to even email in terms of security," said Phil Bousfield, general manager of the Infrastructure Business Unit at GFI Software.

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"This is a technology that has quietly evolved to change with the times and serve the needs of various vertical markets, leapfrogging email in the process to become the most secure form of digital communication available. Whether most people realize it or not, faxing is here to stay - it's just had a facelift," added Bousfield.

Security and Privacy at Risk

Perhaps most surprising is the fact that 72 percent of these businesses are still making use of traditional paper fax technology, a potentially risky practice that may compromise information privacy.

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The GFI poll found that half (50 percent) of office workers have at one time or another been concerned about security and privacy when sending a traditional paper fax. Their concerns are well founded, as 49 percent of respondents admitted to reading a paper fax that was intended for someone else.

Electronic faxing more secure than email

44 percent of respondents said they believed that email is more secure than faxing, suggesting that many people aren't aware of the security-related distinctions between these technologies. Unlike electronic faxing, email can contain viruses and Trojans and can be blocked by spam filters (often with no notification to either sender or recipient).

Key findings from the survey include:

* Nearly one in two (49 percent) office workers have read a paper fax sitting in a fax machine that was intended for someone else.

* 46 percent don't know whether a document or contract sent by fax is legally binding, while an additional 12 percent believe (incorrectly) that it isn't.

* 44 percent of respondents think email is more secure than fax, while 43 percent think they are equally secure.

* Just 13 percent think faxing is more secure than email.

* 50 percent of respondents who have sent data via paper fax have been concerned about privacy and security issues. That level of concern swells above the average in business sectors where sensitive or proprietary data is abundant, including healthcare (60 percent), financial services (56 percent), sales, media and marketing (64 percent), and IT and telecoms (67 percent).

* 85 percent of U.S. businesses make use of faxing in some form.

* 52 percent of those who fax say that faxing is a central part of their daily workflow process.

* 72 percent still use traditional paper faxing, while 27 percent use electronic network fax server solutions and only 12 percent use online fax services.

* 29 percent of businesses are still utilizing fax technology because the companies they work with require it, and 24 percent are themselves required by government or industry regulations to use it.