Companies offer free data backup in hurricanes

After losing such items as family photos, people are finding they need a plan.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) -- Nail plywood over the windows, bring out the generator, fill the bathtub -- and back up the e-mail and hard drive to a secure server hundreds of miles away from the hurricane zone.
Among many Floridians, protecting computer data is becoming a routine part of storm preparations.
The state Chamber of Commerce is encouraging businesses to become even more vigilant about protecting their information through a free e-mail backup service, which companies can activate when a hurricane warning is issued.
And one Boston-based service provider, carbonite.com, is offering six months of free data backup for computer users in hurricane-prone states who sign up before Thursday. The service excludes backup of music and videos, but includes an unlimited amount of other data. (Carbonite.com normally charges $50 a year to back up personal computer files to its server, and hopes its hurricane special brings in more paying customers.)
What can be lost
Baby pictures, e-mail lists, banking records and r & eacute;sum & eacute;s are some of the commonly lost files when personal computer hard drives are destroyed and backup disks lost, said David Friend, who owns carbonite.com.
"We get a lot of horror stories about how they've lost all of their family photos, their Christmas mailing lists, how unbelievably horrifying it is when they realize everything is gone," he said.
The unlimited e-mail backup service provided by Florida's Chamber of Commerce through Gulf Breeze-based AppRiver LLC has a less sentimental purpose -- millions of dollars lost to Florida companies each time their communications and computer systems are knocked out by hurricanes.
"It's getting increasingly more critical the way businesses rely on e-mail these days. Everybody carries around smart phones and PDAs, and I think it's critical you have some kind of protection for that," said Blake Gehres, the state chamber's technology officer.
Although Florida is the only state chamber to enter into a partnership with AppRiver, the company will provide free e-mail backup service to businesses in other states when hurricanes threaten, said Dechay Eaton Watts, AppRiver's marketing director. Businesses could sign up a day or two before hits land, Watts said.
Prepared
Fort Lauderdale-based Gateway Insurance had the system in place last year when Hurricane Wilma struck. Michael Weinberg, Gateway's managing director, said his employees communicated with their 15,000 Florida customers via e-mail on laptop computers equipped with wireless cards.
Gateway moved its operations to a trailer with a portable generator and began handling claims immediately.
The system worked by routing Gateway's incoming and outgoing e-mail through a secure server controlled by AppRiver. That ensured that Gateway's customers did not have any of their e-mails to the company returned as undeliverable.
After Hurricane Ivan struck in 2004, many northwestern Florida businesses lost all of their computer systems, and replacing the lost spreadsheets, employee files and other records became a major expense in disaster loan applications, said Jerry Cartwright, administrator of a small-business development program at the University of West Florida.
Lost service
Fort Myers-based Oswald Trippe and Co. lost its e-mail service for 24 hours after Hurricane Charley knocked out power to the insurance provider's e-mail server in 2004.
"We didn't know how many e-mails we missed. Our customers got non-delivery reports," said Orv Curry, the company's network manager. "A lot of our clients live up North and use e-mail all day, every day."
Oswald Trippe signed up for an e-mail protection service after Charley and did not lose any of its e-mail records after Wilma a year later.
"After our power was restored, we were able to download our e-mails from a secure server and whatever was on the server was saved," Curry said.
AppRiver's Gulf Breeze headquarters were hit by Ivan, but the company's data was stored on servers in Virginia, Texas and London. The company, which filters spam e-mail and provides e-mail security for more than 6,000 clients, said had no service disruptions because of the storm.
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