The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently released information detailing data security breaches in Great Britain between March 2011 and February 2012. The report came after a Freedom of Information request by satellite manufacturer/TV broadcaster Viasat.

All businesses in the UK are bound by the Data Protection Act of 1998, which is enforced by the ICO to prevent data breaches of personally identifiable information (PII). However, the report found that while the private sector accounted for more than a third of all reported breaches (263 cases), it paid just one £1,000 fine, leaving the public sector (467 cases) with the vast majority of the £791,000 total.

Data security is a global problem, and insufficient reporting/enforcement makes incidents difficult to accurately track and, more importantly, prevent. Government agencies with a commitment to customer privacy spend a lot of money protecting data to avoid crippling fines, (the ICO levied a £140,000 fine against Midlothian Council in 2011 for repeatedly leaking personal data about children and their caregivers to the wrong recipients).

The security of protected health information (PHI) is a particular risk for healthcare institutions, and in the UK, they must comply with strict regulatory mandates not only from the Data Protection Act but also from their individual Safe Haven Policies. As a result, in the UK and around the world, the smart money is on secure document management and delivery.

The National Health Service (NHS) is the UK’s publically funded healthcare network, and its 1.7 million combined staff serve more than 62 million citizens. NHS Manchester turned to OpenText Fax Appliance for its document delivery solution. Prior to adopting a network fax approach, fax machines were spread out geographically, and security was limited to keeping fax machines in locked rooms. Now NHS Manchester employees enjoy consolidated digital document transfer and can send and receive faxes directly and securely from the desktop. All faxes are stored and routed through a central database, and retain a full audit trail recording any access or other activity. With less paper documents changing hands, the likelihood of data breaches is greatly reduced.

To learn more about Fax Appliance, click here.

To read the full NHS Manchester case study, click here.

With the desire for the highest quality of patient care in the forefront, healthcare organizations, like yours, are facing many challenges when it comes to secure document delivery and storage. We’ve realized regardless of your size, organizations are looking to technology to reduce cost, safeguard information, maintain the ever-changing regulatory requirements and improve internal workflow processes.

Healthcare IT News wants to know: What are your biggest challenges for developing a centralized digital document delivery strategy that complies with healthcare industry regulations?

Please take part in this five-minute survey, and as a thank you you’ll receive a complimentary copy of the research report that will be published based on your answers.

For over 25 years, Price Brothers (UK) Ltd has been part of the Great Man-Made River water supply project in Libya, a project set up to bring fresh water from deep under the Sahara Desert to coastal towns and cities. They were responsible for the original design of this 1600km underground network of pipes and aqueducts, which is recognised as being the largest of its type in the world.

During this time, Price Bothers amassed a huge library of documents. Current project documentation alone is estimated to be three quarters of a million paper documents – a mixture of drawings, plans and critical correspondence.

Using OpenText Alchemy, a document management solution, ProcessFlows partner Castle Document Management provided an electronic filing cabinet for Price Brothers which exactly replicates and retains their manual filing system.

Searching for information and drawings is now a quick and easy desktop function. Documents can be retrieved and viewed from the CDs at the click of a button and office space taken up by large filing cabinets has been reclaimed, as there is no longer a need to retain the paper documents.

Having dealt with current project documentation, Castle Document Management is continuing to work with Price Brothers to electronically archive older information. Once the process has been completed and everything is in electronic format, backed-up and secure, the paper will be securely destroyed, in line with compliance regulations. There is also the option for Castle Document Management to host the Alchemy repository. Users would then be able to access their documents from any web enabled device. Either way, there is no need for a dedicated document storage server.

Read the entire Price Brothers case study here for more information.

By

Chris Myers, OpenText Regional Sales Director- Eastern Region

During my tenure at OpenText we have had a variety of ways to fax enable branch office settings.  Recently, I have seen customers really start to understand the concept that RightFax can help address fax costs across a wide variety of branch office settings.  Given the multiple ways RightFax and supporting technology can be deployed, it is no wonder that one of these options resonates with so many customers. 

The first scenario I see gaining traction is fax enabling an MFP at the branch office by adding the MFP Connector to the MFP device.  This allows the MFP to communicate with a centralized RightFax server.  This is a low cost, moderately-high functionality configuration.  One thing to be aware of is how the “print” jobs transferred over the network from the branch office MFP to a centralized RightFax server will affect bandwidth between sites. 

The second scenario getting attention, when traffic warrants it, is leveraging an existing branch office IP infrastructure and its data connection and converting the inbound faxes to t.38 packets and transferring those packets to a centralized RightFax server typically housed in the data center.  This scenario is more acceptable when the branch office has IT staff to maintain the gateway and the branch fax volume justifies the investment.  This configuration has minimal impact on the bandwidth requirement as the gateway converts the images to t.38 upon receipt. 

Another scenario, receiving a very receptive response from customers and prospects, is the idea of installing RightFax Branch Office Server.  The RightFax Branch Office Server gives a branch office its own scaled down RightFax server that works in conjunction with a larger, centralized RightFax server at HQ.  This is the preferred, and recommended, configuration for organizations that have branch offices with larger fax volumes and the IT staff to support this architecture. 

Having multiple options allows our channel partners to help customers and prospects maximize their usage of software to comply with the many technical and business requirements faced by organizations today.  For questions and additional information, email captaris.sales@opentext.com.

Major Release Marks 25^th Anniversary of OpenText’s Fax Server Software, Key Analyst Report Names OpenText the Industry Leader in Fax over IP

Waterloo, ON. – June 8, 2011 – OpenText™ (NASDAQ: OTEX, TSX: OTC) today announced that its industry-leading fax server software now includes enhanced security for sending and receiving  faxes from cloud-based office systems including Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps with the release of OpenText RightFax 10.

As companies of all sizes look to cloud-based office application suites such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Apps, the ability to securely send and receive faxes through these services will be critical, while also retaining integration with other parts of the organization. Adding to its cloud support, RightFax Web Access is now included with all systems, allowing users to access their RightFax server from a Web browser.

RightFax 10 marks the kick-off of the 25^th anniversary year for RightFax and represents a significant milestone in the product’s history.  In addition to enhanced support for cloud-based office systems, the new release makes it easier, faster and more secure for customers to integrate faxing into their business processes and workflows with new features such as barcode routing, searchable PDF delivery and enhanced Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Lotus Notes 8.5 integration. It also adds optional accessibility support that meets mandates under the Americans with Disabilities Act

OpenText is the leading overall fax server supplier and the leading supplier in the fast-growing fax over IP (FoIP) market, according to a recently released report called Fax over IP Server Markets: 2010-2015 authored by Davidson Consulting, an independent fax industry analyst firm. OpenText achieved the leading position in the FoIP segment by virtue of its 46-percent revenue growth in the past year and captured 31 percent of the market.

Read the complete press release.

For more information visit: http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/rightfax-10-whats-new.aspx or www.rightfax.com.

Mr. Sanal Nair, Rincon India Solutions

Star Health is India’s first stand-alone Health Insurance Company and deals in Personal Accident, Mediclaim and Overseas Travel Insurance. It has tied up with over 5000 hospitals across India and do not have Third Party Administrators (TPAs) involved in settlement of claims.

When Star Health approached us, they had a problem with the incoming faxes on fax machines. Fax was the most convenient means for hospitals to send documents for processing but the quantity of faxes coming in was too much for a fast turnaround. They frequently complained of missed pages, busy lines, paper jams etc.

We deployed RightFax and also helped them integrate it with their back-end claims management application. While, they started off with a small solution, they were quick in increasing the number of ports and also bought a cold stand by server as fax is a very critical application for them. 

After the deployment, they can now live without any missed or mixed pages. The users can retrieve documents quickly and easily and so can respond better to queries raised by doctors or customers. The response time improved tremendously. Read more.

Today we are unveiling our latest video introducing RightFax 10. For those of you who remember the RightFax Shark, well we’ve included a bit of fun around that topic as well. RightFax has been dominating the fax market since 1987 and version 10 is no exception. We are looking forward to the launch this spring and will be sharing more detail around features and functionality over the coming weeks. So stay tuned and be sure to join in the fun as we celebrate the upcoming launch of RF 10.

Learn more about RightFax products.

If you have questions about RightFax, please contact us at captaris.sales@opentext.com.

My Dearest Valentine,

We’ve been together for nearly 25 years.

I can trust you with all my secrets.

You are reliable and trustworthy, everything I’ve ever dreamed of.

You reduce costs, streamline business processes and improve productivity.

You have extensive tracking, auditing and reporting components.

You integrate with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and many others.

No one can compare.

It’s no wonder people love you.

You leverage Ricoh, Xerox, Konica Minolta, HP and every other MFD/MFP.

You have a hosted service that is rich, scalable and fully integrated.

Your secure document delivery solution enables certified document exchange between two parties for most file types.

Call centers, mortgage processors, law firms, financial institutions and healthcare organizations love you.

We at OpenText love you.

Companies around the world love you.

You are RightFax, the world’s leading fax server and the fastest growing Internet Fax solution.

–Share your RightFax Valentine poem. We’d love to hear from you.–

You may have seen in the headlines today that the save-the-date notices for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding were sent via fax. CNN Entertainment

As the makers of RightFax we think this is great, but some of the media coverage has asked why these were sent via an older technology like fax. Kate and William are obviously a tech savvy couple and the media has already widely covered how they announced their upcoming marriage through social media. So the question is why did they choose fax for these save-the-date announcements?

Here are 5 possible reasons why Buckingham Palace may have chosen to send save-the-date invitations via fax:

• Email is too easy to forward or intercept
• They wanted confirmation of delivery (which email can’t reliably provide)
• Emails can get lost and perhaps Kate and William wanted a physical piece of paper put in the hands of these VIPs
• Fax is still ubiquitous and one of the fastest and easiest ways to get important information into someone’s hands
• By using a fax server (such as RightFax), sending all of these notices as a broadcast would be quick and easy…and again delivered securely, with proof of delivery

What are your thoughts on why Buckingham Palace chose to use fax?

To learn more about how fax is being used today please visit our Future of Fax website – http://www.futureoffax.com/