Data regulations worldwide encourage new solutions to older business problems or processes, including some surprising ones. Per Reuters, U.S. government agencies, major financial institutions, and top universities are transitioning from traditional fax machines in favor of encrypted, cloud-based digital fax services.
The shift in infrastructure comes partially in response to both security threats and regulations across the globe looking to help curb those threats going forward. Only in the USA, you are prone to encounter HIPAA and GLBA compliance. Once organizations start looking further afield into the EU, the list of regulations targeting data handling expands rapidly.
While Fax machines seem like a quaint and old-school system to be replacing, they’re in use in a variety of places including in government offices of EU states – and they are now being judged to pose an unacceptable security risk.
The core vulnerability of legacy systems is the lack of a verifiable, secure chain of custody for sensitive information, said a technology analyst familiar with enterprise communication trends.
Tackling data transfers opens the topic of data storage
The fixes above address issues with transferring controlled data safely, which neatly circles us back to questions of data storage; after all, once we have complied with requirements on data handling, we have to remain in compliance. In the EU, this means alignment with GDPR.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European based set of rules and one of the strictest regulations in the world which gives consumers rights over their own personal data. The GDPR protects personally identifiable information of customers and employees. That is a broad category that can include anything that might identify a person.
In conjunction with other regulations, this creates a mix where organizations need to maintain a chain of custody and security on data from point of transmission to place of storage. Under such an environment, regulatory pressure is forcing a mass movement to new solutions; verifiable compliance is the new name of the game and will likely remain so moving forward.
Your Data In Your Hands – With TECH-ARROW
