A £4M electronic warehouse has been set up in the region to counter the potential effects of a terrorist attack.

A number of blue-chip companies suffered in the wake of the September 11 att-ack on the World Trade Centre because their IT back-up was on-site and was destroyed.

A great deal of information is stored on London Docklands at present, but Middlesbrough firm Onyx believes its has a safer solution.

It has set up hosting facilities on Tyneside for regional, national and international companies wishing to keep vital data away from potential terrorist targets.

The Databanx system is expected to improve firms' disaster recovery strategy through remote hosting of digital assets.

Neil Stephenson, Databanx's sales and marketing director, believes the facility is a major step towards establishing the North-East as a major European disaster recovery centre.

He said: "There are numerous data centres tightly clustered on The Isle of Dogs, in London's Docklands, making this location a real vulnerability.

"The new Databanx centre provides the opportunity to mirror business' critical IT operations and servers in an area precisely 247 miles from potential terrorist targets in Canary Wharf.

"With the increasing presence of blue-chip multinational companies in the North-East, organisations such as British Airways now have the option to co-locate their corporate data away from London and in doing so, minimise risk.

"For many companies, the website is the business, and if it goes down for any reason, from a simple e-mail right up to the worst case scenario of a terrorist attack, it would spell disaster."