The news media seemed to have a lot of fun reporting on the behind-the-scenes Hollywood details revealed in the November 2014 hack against Sony Pictures.

And the public couldn’t get enough. With the 170,000 Sony Pictures private emails that were leaked as a result of the hack, the media were able to report on plenty of Hollywood gossip and in-fighting, including such details as these:

–  Internal emails showed that a major movie director was physically abusive during filming, and one of the actors (a household name) had to intervene.

–  An acclaimed producer mocked an A-list actor (also a household name) in an internal email to a colleague.

–  A Sony Pictures executive and a top film producer traded emails joking about the president of the United States.

But as this story from the UK Telegraph points out, the cyber attack on Sony had another consequence. The company’s senior leadership began moving many of their communications from email to — ready for this? — fax.

Only in Hollywood!

Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, was among the high-profile personal victims of the hack: Many of his private emails were leaked to the public.

As the Hollywood Reporter explained in a recent story, Lynton told an audience at the 2016 Code/Media Conference in California, “My fax machine is in great use at this point,” adding that he now sends sensitive messages by fax at least once a day.

Digital faxing is more secure than email.

For a brief overview of why Sony CEO Lynton is wise to transmit his sensitive business communications by fax rather than by email, consider this feature in Digital Trends Magazine. Their tech experts argue that “email was not designed with any privacy or security in mind.”

The only suggestion we would have for Lynton would be to take the next simple step in security — upgrading his company’s fax infrastructure from an analog fax machine and standard telephone line, to a highly secure digital fax service.

An enterprise-caliber digital fax solution provides protection against most of email’s inherent weak points — including the sender’s device, the multiple servers where the email is stored along its transmission journey (most if note encrypted are at risk), and the email recipient’s device.

If your business regularly sends sensitive or confidential data by email — and the Sony hack has you concerned about the integrity of those messages — consider moving those communications to digital fax.