IT Baseline Protection Manual - The Information Warfare Site

Safeguard Catalogue - Organisation Remarks
____________________________________________________________________ .........................................
S 2.180 Setting up a fax mail centre
Initiation responsibility: Head of IT Section, IT Security Management
Implementation responsibility: Administrator
To ensure smooth operation of the fax server(s), a fax mail centre must be set
up and a person responsible for faxes must be appointed. The fax mail centre
is responsible for a number of organisational and technical tasks which depend
on how the fax server is used.
As the staff in the fax mail centre generally have access to all incoming and
outgoing fax transmissions, the staff chosen to man it must be subject to the
same rigorous selection procedure as is necessary for administrators.
The fax mail centre also needs to work closely with those responsible for the
other communications services (especially E mail and private branch
exchange).
The fax mail centre should be accessible to all users at all times. The
procedures covering staff absences must ensure that the fax mail centre is
always manned.
Typical tasks of a fax server mail centre are as follows:
- Administration of the fax server application. This includes:
- configuration of new users,
- assignment of access authorisations to users and user groups,
- resetting of passwords,
- checking of communications links
- analysis of any log data generated,
- point of contact for users in case of problems,
- maintenance of central address books and distribution lists,
- carrying out of data backups where these are not the responsibility of
the operating system administrator(s),
- Delivery and archiving of faxes,
- Correction of errors in fax delivery,
- Co-ordination between those responsible for private branch exchanges and
E mail systems.
Finally, the fax client software on the workstations needs to be supported. This
task can be performed either through the fax mail centre or else through the
organisational unit which provides support to the workstations.
The tasks should be considered in the context of incoming faxes as these
depend on the mode of operation of the fax server.
Manual forwarding of incoming fax transmissions
Where incoming fax transmissions are not automatically delivered to
recipients, they must be manually forwarded by the fax mail centre. For
example, this could take the form that the fax mail centre prints out copies of
incoming faxes, which are then forwarded to recipients in the normal manner.
This procedure is not significantly different from that which applies to the use
____________________________________________________________________ .........................................
IT-Baseline Protection Manual: Oktober 2000
Careful selection of
employees
Continuous access
Support for the fax client