Barber said that better real-time, online data replication tools would help him set up emergency facilities during a disaster.

"We"re really trying to mitigate [business continuity issues] through backup and replication. With the Miami office down, I have lawyers who can"t service clients and can"t make money for the firm," Barber said. "What really is attractive to me is to be able to flash over data to a restore and move it to a data center, and then move it to a local office for efficiency."

Barber said his company also uses United Parcel Service Inc. to move backup tapes between some 30 branch offices. Some of the tapes are encrypted, but others are not. "That"s a risk," he said.

One goal Barber is working toward is moving data over his company"s existing WAN in an encrypted form. That, he said, would cut transportation costs, save man-hours and reduce the risk of losing tapes that are often moved between offices for case management.

"We"ve received tapes back that are chopped ... and eaten by the dog [so to speak]," Barber said, adding that not managing tapes properly can cost a company millions of dollars in fines

Ken Black, global storage architect at Yahoo Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., said he is looking at different methods of encryption in light of numerous high-profile cases of data loss, and because strict federal guidelines require him to focus on security. "We have a group called "The Paranoids." They"re our security people, and they look for holes everywhere. And what"s irritating is that we"re finding them everywhere," Black said.