OK In RL I work in the finance industry. It is a small company that outsources our paperwork-processing applications and checks and stuff. When I started with the company we sent all our documents received to the contractor. A couple of months ago we changed contractors. We were thinking the old docs would be shipped to the new company.

wrong. supposedly a lot of smaller corps use a place called Black Mountain to store docs. all that happens when wechange contractors is that black mountain stops givng access to company A and gives it to company B.

think of the potential runs
sure the big boys have their own records but smaller places?looking for details, maybe cutting out a corp form access or giving someone access who shouldn't have it?

Iron Mountain?

yup, but myself working for such a multinational corporate, yes we do out-source to the mountain (instead of maintaining our own archive) and yes it makes for nice runs.

Indeed, I can't find anything on Black Mountain. Did you mean Iron Mountain? Iron Mountain has become a bit of an industry default, from what I understand. They have warehouses all over the country (generally they will not store your data in the same geographic area it's collected in. If your offices are in San Francisco, they'll store the data in Denver, for instance.) The warehouses are pretty high security, actually. Mantraps, metal detectors, the whole kaboodle. Remember they handle gov't contracts, so they aren't playing around. They house documents and backup tapes (for computers). They also advertise they can get that stuff out again very quickly in case of an emergency (if your systems all crash and you're reconstituting your server room in an alternate site, you need those backup tapes back right away). Not sure what the process is, but it would be interesting to find out.

Also interesting, Google has similar high-security. Google is currently branching into it both for documents/data management services (like Iron Mountain) and for the business portion of their googledocs apps. I've seen some of the google advertisements - it too is pretty hard core. They are cutting no corners. The one mark against Google is they can't tell you where precisely your data will be, and they have warehouses overseas. That makes them ineligible for gov't contracts.

that and Google occassionally talking about selling users details tends to mae them seriously suspect.

We used to use Iron Mountain for our business, and they are very secure... They also boast a very fast turnaround for return of items... We could call up one day and have the items in our office by the Morning of the Next, if we called up first thing in morning (before 9), we could have the items in our office by the end of the day for a small additional fee.

Also a great idea for a Shadowrun...