Bill,Therefore the threat of flooding I judge to be greater than the threat of remote computer interrogation fraud. Even if that flooding threat was not their I would still use the document storage along with steam and all other processes I am using now simply for convenience and business efficiency.
If you wish to have an example of the problems of storing everything on computers in offices and homes, well my brothers business received a letter from a company which had its offices in the twin towers when the New York attack occurred. The letter he received some months later asked how much his company owed the company based in the towers as all the account details had been lost.
Being in workplace health and safety one thing you realize is that everything we do in life is a risk. All you can do is assess that risk and take the lowest hazard option.
It is normal industry "practice", in cases like this, to have what is called a disaster recovery plan (DRP). In addition to computers and backups, you should plan on sending other important papers, such as tax and legal documents, and data to an offsite warehouse somewhere. What you don't want is to keep these papers in a safe on the premises, and sure the online storage is great until you can get to your data. Remember the lightning strike that hit Microsoft and Amazon a couple of months ago? This put both of them off the air for quite some time.
Being a small business owner doesn't mean foregoing a DRP. In fact it's most often the "little guys" like you and me who suffer the most when the important information is gone.
It's a small price to pay should anything get washed away in a flood, or destroyed in a fire. With your important information tucked away, elsewhere along with your other written information, offsite, you can easily get up and running quickly once the disaster site has been cleared or cleaned up.
Coming from the paranoid IT guy,
John