In a survey conducted in 2005 by the Ad Council, most businesses agreed that emergency preparedness is important, yet only 39% said their company had a plan in place. In companies with distributed branch offices, data protection strategies may not have kept up with the reality that branch or remote offices now contain customer databases, email servers and financial information that are critical to the company's day-to-day operation. The traditional approach - relying on tape backup for branch-office data protection - is costly and risky. This white paper examines some of the strategies and technologies available for backing up remote or branch offices.