How to simplify this Java null check using Optional

I have this snippet in a project I am writing:

private <T> String toStringOrNull(T value) {
    return value == null ? null : value.toString();
}

And I really do not like it.

How can I make it more modern, secure and readable?

I think Optional is a good fit but I am not sure it would make sense to use something like:

Optional.of(value).orElse(null)

What I do is to retrieve entities from a database and those entities are then mapped to a DTO.
I copy the properties using:

BeanUtils.copyProperties(source, target);

But some of the properties can be null and I need to handle that.
Maybe I should make the DTO fields ignore null fields (like here: https://www.baeldung.com/jackson-ignore-null-fields)

What would be the best practice? 

Thanks for your help.