Data rivers overflowing.

With the hurricane season underway--and with memories of last year's catastrophes still fresh in mind--businesses in areas that are likely to be affected by summer storms are doing whatever they can to secure their premises from damage or destruction. But what about digital assets?

The Florida Chamber of Commerce is helping Florida businesses to ensure that their e-mail traffic keeps flowing throughout hurricane season, even if flood waters shut down mail servers.

The Digital Disaster Preparedness service is being offered for free by AppRiver, LLC, a Gulf Breeze, Florida-based company that provides e-mail security services. The company will monitor the mail servers of Florida companies that have an Internet domain name and have signed up for the service via the Florida Chamber of Commerce or App River Web sites.

If bad weather hits and a company's mail server goes down, AppRiver will reroute incoming messages to its own data centers in Texas, Virginia, and England until the damaged servers are back up, or until the company asks the mail to be redirected (messages can be made available online if requested). Spam and virus filtering are included.

The free service runs through October 31.

@ POINT YOUR BROWSER TO WWW.SECURITYMANAGEMENT.COM TO LINK TO THESE TWO SITES, WHERE YOU CAN SIGN UP FOR THE DIGITAL DISASTER PREPAREDNESS SERVICE IF YOUR COMPANY IS BASED IN FLORIDA.