The Chamber of Commerce has developed the "Digital Disaster Preparedness" service, which will provide free emergency email protection to Florida businesses during the 2006 hurricane season. Using the service, which was developed in cooperation with AppRiver, businesses can protect and preserve email traffic if their systems are disrupted by hurricane-related damage.

"If a hurricane threatens server damage or power outages without back-up, this is the perfect system for ensuring the continued flow of email," says Blake Gehres, chief technology officer, at the Florida Chamber of Commerce. "Businesses can avoid disruption to their email traffic for the duration of any outages at no cost by taking advantage of this service."

Businesses can access the free service by visiting the Chamber's Web site or the AppRiver Web site, and following the "Digital Disaster Preparedness" links.

AppRiver will monitor the email server activity of companies that sign up for the service. If the receiving servers go down for any reason, AppRiver will begin queuing incoming messages at one of its data centers, located in Texas, Virginia and England, until the company's servers are back online or the company asks for the emails to be redirected elsewhere.