Over the past 20 years, FaxCore has established itself as a leader in on-premises fax deployments by setting a standard for innovation. Its pioneering technology led to the creation of the first fax software to be built on the Microsoft .NET platform, to use Microsoft SQL, and to provide a browser-based interface. That innovative leverage of internet-age technology made for an easy transition to cloud-based fax services.
Meeting the Challenge: Since its inception, customers had been deploying FaxCore solutions on-premises. Unfortunately, that meant FaxCore’s system became yet another system that its IT team had to manage. The company’s growing desire to redirect IT resources and manpower to other critical areas in the business led to increased customer demand for cloud-based services. To strengthen its security program, FaxCore enlisted the help of American Cyber Security Management who, after evaluating FaxCore’s security posture, recommended Armor Anywhere, Armor’s enterprise-grade cloud security and compliance platform.
Quick Glance
Industry- Fax Communications
- Azure
- With many of its customers operating in the healthcare, banking, logistics, and government industries—and being fully aware of the security and regulatory climates in these spaces—FaxCore immediately recognized the importance of ensuring data security in its Azure cloud environment and looked for ways to mitigate the risks.
- Armor’s proactive approach to security and around-the-clock monitoring allows FaxCore to respond to incidents before they can turn into service-disrupting events. This consequently enables the company to maintain the “five nines” (99.999%) of uptime—an essential capability, given the critical nature of many fax jobs running in FaxCore’s global cloud environment.
ABOUT FAXCORE
Over the past 20 years, FaxCore has established itself as a leader in on-premises fax deployments by setting a standard for innovation. Its pioneering technology led to the creation of the first fax software to be built on the Microsoft .NET platform, to use Microsoft SQL, and to provide a browser-based interface. That innovative leverage of internet-age technology made for an easy transition to cloud-based fax services.
While some may view faxing as an archaic technology, reality paints a different picture. Fax machines and fax servers are often used to share patient data between healthcare facilities, and most prescriptions in the U.S. are transmitted to pharmacies via fax. Businesses, from Fortune 500 to SMBs, all depend on faxing to securely exchange documents.
Numerous factors have allowed faxing to remain an integral part of mission-critical communications in all kinds of industries worldwide. One factor is its ability to provide a universal and secure way of exchanging documents with a time stamp of delivery and confirmation of receipt—a crucial requirement in industries such as healthcare, finance, energy, and logistics. Another is the continued legal acceptance of faxed signatures.
FINDING THE RIGHT SOLUTION
To strengthen its security program, FaxCore enlisted the help of Carlin Dornbusch, president & CISSP at American Cyber Security Management (ACSM). Dornbusch’s valuable contributions to FaxCore’s security endeavors was made possible through the ACSM’s “CISO-as-a-Service” offering.
The offering enables businesses to obtain top-notch guidance from certified and highly experienced security professionals who can oversee an organization’s security efforts. After evaluating FaxCore’s security posture, Dornbusch knew exactly what the company needed. He highly recommended Armor and said, “Knowing the full capabilities of Armor’s solution, IDS, IPS, FIM, Patch Monitoring, etc., it brought us many solutions in one package that was easy to deploy.”
When FaxCore vetted security and compliance vendors, its strong preference for rich security and compliance capabilities and reasonable pricing also tipped the scales in favor of Armor. Tom Linhard, CEO at FaxCore, said Armor Anywhere, Armor’s enterprise-grade cloud security and compliance platform, allowed FaxCore “to check so many compliance boxes very quickly.”
WHY ARMOR
As soon as FaxCore’s leadership gave the green light, the Armor team immediately set into motion a quick and smooth implementation process, providing first-class knowledge transfer and support. Despite FaxCore’s Azure cloud environment spanning multiple continents, FaxCore Product Manager Chris Kaiser was happy to share that “the deployment was turnkey, and that allowed us to achieve a quick rollout here in North America as well as in our data centers overseas.”
It became immediately clear just how frequently attackers were attempting to break into its systems. Armor’s detections confirmed FaxCore’s prior suspicions of needing a stronger security monitoring system. “We really did not know how broadly and frequently attacks on our public systems were occurring until we deployed Armor,” Linhard said.
Beyond a threat detection and response solution, Armor provided more than just monitoring. “Many times, our issues are dealt with by the system of the Armor team while the product teams are asleep,” Dornbusch said. And, for occurrences that are escalated into incidents, he added, “We are able to quickly pinpoint the areas of impact, (which) allows the FaxCore production team to quickly address the problem.”
Linhard added, “We’re able to sleep well at night now knowing that we have a solid security-monitoring solution in place.”
FaxCore teams have complete, real-time visibility of their environment’s security status through the Armor Portal. “The Armor Portal is now a major destination for our IT and security teams and is able to give us a good dashboard at a glance,” Kaiser said.
The introduction of Armor Anywhere into FaxCore’s cloud environment not only improved the environment’s security posture, but also provided several tangible and intangible business benefits.
Armor’s proactive approach to security and around-the-clock monitoring allows FaxCore to respond to incidents before they can turn into service-disrupting events. This consequently enables the company to maintain the “five nines” (99.999%) of uptime—an essential capability, given the critical nature of many fax jobs running in FaxCore’s global cloud environment.
These exceptionally elevated levels of uptime and security are easily demonstrable and have become strong selling points. FaxCore’s sales teams and dealer channels, who have gained trust and confidence in the cloud environment due to Armor, have been very enthusiastic in highlighting these attributes, which have, in turn, resulted in more customer wins.
In the past, FaxCore’s product managers and support staff had to spend a considerable amount of time monitoring the cloud-based fax service for issues. With the arrival of Armor, they now have better peace of mind knowing that Armor keeps a watchful eye on the cloud environment at all times.
