About 80 per cent of UK companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, have inadequate back-up facilities.

Downtime could cost them everything but Datafort of Guildford has come up with a remarkably cost-effective solution.

Its product can compress a company's data at source using a 256-bit financial grade encryption and send it via the internet to one of the Datafort fireproof and alarmed data centres that contain high quality, raid enabled, SCSI-mirrored disk servers.

The data remains safely compressed and encrypted until it is retrieved and restored within your firewall.

The process is remarkably easy. The first step is to fully back up all the important information currently stored on your computer or computers.

Datafort's Off Site Back-up Software then compresses your selected files and encrypts them before transmitting them via your internet connection to their mirrored disk servers.

After the initial full back-up, the software regularly scans the designated directories for new and changed files.

Should you ever need a single file or a complete system restoration, you simply view an archive directory, select the files needed for download and restore them to any computer supplied with your encryption key.

Pricing varies according to the amount of storage space used but, given the security of the service and the peace of mind it offers, I suspect most small businesses will find Datafort's charges acceptable.

Rating: 7 out of 10. Price: From £9.95 per month. Contact: 01483 872052 or www.datafort.co.uk