Customer service during a disaster may be important, but insurers and agencies need to protect and help their own businesses in these times too. The Florida Chamber of Commerce, Tallahassee, Fla., provides free emergency e-mail protection service available to all Florida businesses during the 2006 hurricane season. The "Digital Disaster Preparedness" service is available to companies that have an Internet domain name and request the service online-a process that is designed to take less than 10 minutes.Developed in cooperation with AppRiver LLC, a Gulf Breeze, Fla.-based business e-mail security services provider, the "Digital Disaster Preparedness" service will protect and preserve e-mail traffic if businesses' IT infrastructures are vulnerable to hurricane-related damage.
"Businesses can avoid disruption to their e-mail traffic for the duration of any outages at no cost by taking advantage of this service," says Blake Gehres, chief technology officer, Florida Chamber of Commerce.
Florida businesses can sign up on the Digital Disaster Preparedness section of Florida Chamber's Web site at www.floridachamber.com or the AppRiver's Web site at www.appriver.com.
Once a company signs up, AppRiver will monitor that company's e-mail server activity. If the receiving server is down for any reason, AppRiver will begin queuing the business' incoming e-mail messages in one of its Tier 1 data centers located in Texas, Virginia and England until the company's e-mail servers are fully functioning or the company asks for its e-mail to be redirected elsewhere. E-mail messages can also be made available online at the user's request. The service, which also includes free spam and virus filtering, is available from June 1 to October 31.
