• Sensitive medical records gone in a fire.
• Company research documents rendered unreadable in a flood.
• Contracts chunked in the trash by absent-minded employees.
• White papers gone brown with the slow inexorable march of time.
• 15 years of IRS-ready audit reports made food for a pack of pink pulp-thirsty paper-eating moths (hey—it could happen!).

Storing these online is the first step to security, and the first step to online backup is Technifax’s digital archival and retrieval service.

It’s a lesson Dallas County learned the hard way in late May, after a busted water main flooded one of the county’s downtown records buildings. According to the Dallas Morning News :

The computer disaster that a consultant warned Dallas County about two years ago arrived Tuesday when a break in a water main disabled its computer systems, crippling operations for almost the entire county government.

The 2008 consultant’s report warned the county that it needed a backup plan for its computer system in case of a disaster — an off-site location to keep county operations up and running. But no action was taken on that advice.

The consequences were felt by all departments Tuesday, as staff resorted to pen, paper, radios and telephones to handle critical tasks such as making sure the right prisoners were booked into the jail and released from it.

The county’s criminal justice system nearly ground to a halt, as paper processing from another era led to lengthy delays — keeping some prisoners in jail longer than normal.

“We’re doing a lot of stuff the old-fashioned way,” Sheriff Lupe Valdez said.

[...] A consultant hired to assess the computer systems gave the county its lowest rating in 2008 in seven out of eight categories. The county did poorly in three key areas: core infrastructure, technical support and risk assessment. One of the most alarming findings in the report by Miami-based eGov Consulting Services was that the county could not recover critical functions after a disaster.

And it’s a lesson that could we could’ve helped them easily avoid.

Online, off-site backups are already popular with many businesses around Dallas. But what can you do with all those years and years of physical files you have stored away somewhere in a closet that remain vulnerable to disaster and loss? We can help you digitize, organize, and store those as well.

We use a paperless document imaging solution that preserves documents infinitely in top quality. That means no more overloaded file drawers in cramped document closets. No more hours spent searching for important information stashed away (somewhere) years ago. No more scanning faded and time-worn reports. No more worries about what could go wrong in a disaster.

It’s safe, secure, and a source of invaluable peace of mind for your business. Contact our document archival and retrieval experts for more information. There’s no reason to risk losing it all.

Fine—it’s probably not a blockbuster in the making, but office supply scams are still altogether worrisome and potentially costly for many small businesses. In fact, the Federal Trade Commission is taking the problem seriously, filing suits against several fraudsters and launching an initiative they call “Banish Office Supply Scams” (BOSS).

Basically, office supply scammers prey on inadequate purchase controls from which many small businesses suffer by deceptively charging customers for (often substandard) items they never actually ordered, or simply invoicing for products that were never actually delivered. Altogether, the FTC estimates that office supply fraud costs schools, businesses, nonprofits, and the government itself $200 million per year.

Sound too silly to be true? The excellent website Snopes.com—which serves to separate fact from fiction in this rumor-obsessed Internet age—certifies this fraud as real, and explains how it works:

The key to the fraud’s success is gathering enough information about the targeted company and what products it uses to make the “order” appear legitimate. Con artists begin their assault by wheedling tips about what supplies the business uses out of whoever answers the phone. (Sometimes they pretend to be conducting a survey.) The fraudsters generally make a point of finding out who is in charge of ordering for the targeted company, because this name will be used on the invoice. Once useful information has been extracted, the assault begins in earnest. The scammers will call back to offer to sell at discount prices the very products the company routinely runs through. Or they phone to “confirm” what they claim is a standing order, using the information harvested earlier to make the transaction sound routine. Or they skip the call back part of the scam entirely, instead sending unannounced boxes of product along with an invoice that quotes the name of the firm’s office manager.

Similarly, what have come to be called “toner phoners” usually start by calling and pretending to double-check a copier’s serial number, then offering to restock a company’s toner supply at reduced rates. What ends up being shipped, of course, is horribly overpriced product of exceptionally poor quality. These scams can involve outright lies, with the person on the phone claiming to be the firm’s regular supplier, or maintaining that the offer is “special” or “good for a limited time” or is coming in just ahead of a scheduled price increase. Products foisted onto the unsuspecting are almost always badly overpriced (sometimes running ten times as much as they are worth) and not of the brand or quality the business usually orders.

This can happen with any range of supplies, like copier paper, toner, ink cartridges, light bulbs, cleaning supplies — even urinal cakes (although we have no idea how you’d test to see if those are defective). And it often works precisely because it’s just the sort of nickel and dime-ing that many companies simply won’t notice, because the last thing a business wants to do is continually audit seemingly insignificant matters like office supplies.

Check out the BOSS website for a wealth of resources that can help you both prevent and deal after the fact with these fraudsters. Or contact us at Technifax—we can help you avoid these sorts of scams by carefully monitoring and streamlining your office supply purchases. We’ll also help you avoid wasting money on more conventional money traps, like wasteful stockpiling, poor ordering practices, and billing problems.

According to CBSNews:

Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive — like the one on your personal computer — storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine.

[...]“The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms,” John Juntunen said, “that information would be very valuable.”

[...]“You’re talking about potentially ruining someone’s life,” says digital security expert Ira Winkler. “Where they could suffer serious social repercussions.”

Winkler is a former analyst for the National Security Agency and a leading expert on digital security. “You have to take some basic responsibility and know that these copiers are actually computers that need to be cleaned up,” Winkler said.
CBS goes on to show just frighteningly easy it is for sensitive documents to end up in someone else’s hands, grabbing drug prescription information, blood test results and other medical records from a New York insurance company.

While copier data breaches might come as a shock to many businesses with this buzz worthy announcement from CBS, the fact is Technifax has been helping clients deal with data security for years. This current “buzz” is old news to us.

In fact, here are just a few basic things we do to boost digital copier security for our clients:

• Data Overwrite Security (DOS) Software Kits

For hard-drive equipped printers and copiers, a data security kit keeps print, scan, and copy jobs from sticking to the hard drive in the first place. All data is overwritten and destroyed, either automatically or manually.

• Hard Drive Reformatting

Reformatting is the cheapest option, and should be sufficient for machines used solely for less sensitive documents (for which security is not a great concern). Basically, reformatting capability doesn’t keep the hard drive from storing data, but it does make it extremely difficult to retrieve such data.

It can be done in highly secure ways approved by agencies like the U.S. Military. But if security is high-priority, reformatting should only be utilized in conjunction with other security measures.

• Hard Drive Replacement and Removal

Even though other methods of erasing and reformatting hard drives are trustworthy, for complete peace of mind about data security, sometimes the best thing to do is simply go ahead and replace the whole thing. This also might be necessary if your copier is an older model, for which no data security kit is available.

Replacement is an easy, low-risk procedure that should be done right before the copier is resold or returned at the end of a lease. The machine goes back, but the hard drive stays with you. It’s yours to bury, burn, or pound into peanut butter—whatever you need to do to feel secure.

We can also help with additional methods like password protection, data auto deletion, and encryption. Contact the Dallas Copier experts at Technifax for a consultation—we’ll help you devise and implement a security strategy customized to your concerns and needs.

Print Management or MPS is the only field of expertise that looks at the big picture for the client, that gives dedicated service towards finding the best interest of the client. Finding a company that will give the client a good idea of the advantages in getting things done with their best interest in mind is important. The management of the printing environment, Managed Print Services is to be preferred if you want to make a good and fruitful printing choice. The goal is to simplify the whole process of print management for companies. Look for a provider with good experience in the field of MPS, through which they have been making the process look so simple yet bringing out good, in fact great results, even for complex printing needs.

Written by: John Ausmus, Director of Managed Print Services

Managed Print is an all-inclusive program that includes maintenance and supplies for as low, in some instances, as a penny a printed page. Meter reads are collected electronically every month and billing can be broken out so that companies can internally bill printers to their individual departments. As the customer, you are only billed only for what you print and during the length of your contract your price per page will not increase even as pricing increases in the industry. Managed Print Services is a great way to gain control over your companies printing costs.

Written by: John Ausmus, Director of Managed Print Services

Managed Print Services (MPS) is one those fantastic industries that capitalizes on opportunities for time and money savings you might not have even realized you had. And at Technifax, it’s just four steps to cutting costs and boosting efficiency.

So what’s the idea behind Managed Print Services?

We know that business owners have better things to do than monitor every nickel and dime that bleeds out the door via their printing needs. So at Technifax, we can help you identify ways that you’re wasting time and money in your printing process, and implement a plan to reduce your overall spending while still boosting optimal productivity. It really is one of those rare, simple win-wins.

Basically, MPS helps you reorganize and optimize your current document management process. This means:

• Better directing which documents go to which printers.
• Identifying wasteful stockpiling of the wrong types of supplies like toner and paper.
• Reducing unnecessary wear and tear on your equipment.
• Streamlining the troubleshooting process.
• Considering the cost advantages of upgrading to more modern equipment.
• Measuring hidden energy costs.
• Relieving you of headaches like reordering, maintenance, and billing issues.
• Adding a “green focus”— less paper equals fewer dead trees.

These all seem like simple improvements, but you might be startled to find out just how much time and money you could be saving when you add them all together.

How can this save you money?

Each of these benefits saves you in either overhead costs or time — both of which heavily impact your bottom line.

Take time, for example. Let’s say your employees are spending an extra 15 minutes per day at an out-of-date copier. Or let’s say every time a machine breaks down, you spend an hour on the phone trying to get it fixed. Or consider the amount of time it takes your company to juggle bills and reorders from a four or five of different suppliers.

The nickels and dimes add up as well. You might have an old, power-guzzling machine that is raising your energy bill. You might be wasting paper with a machine that can only print on one side of the paper. Or perhaps you’re stockpiling supplies in a closet somewhere that you might never use.

We’ll identify any of these issues, and help you implement a plan to capitalize on these savings opportunities.

What do we do first?

At Technifax, our vendor-neutral consulting service is based around a proven four-step process that we’ll customize to fit your needs:

1. Assessment — Define project scope and objectives. Identify interviewees. Develop timeline and onsite logistics.
2. Optimization — Conduct interviews. Shadow workers. Document current-state model.
3. Ongoing Analysis — Analyze current-state model. Identify strengths and weaknesses. Document future-state model.
4. Service & Support — Identify client options. Present formal presentation. Deliver documented report.

The whole thing can typically be done in three to four weeks.

Contact our Dallas managed print services experts. We’ll get you started on this road to savings.