Protection for e-billing data with a hosted provider yet much of the information behind the firewall

Several vendors of e-billing systems offer ASP (application specific packages, aka hosted services) that run on servers maintained by the vendor (See my posts of March 26, 2006 and April 26, 2006 for more on this option.). A piece in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, Feb. 2007 at 31, mentions a hybrid solution for data protection (See my post of Jan. 25, 2007 on encryption of invoice information.) which law departments may wish to evaluate.

"We use a hosted provider for our [vendor name] system and maintain the majority of our data inside our firewall for added protection. Our invoices are sent in an encrypted format which we are able to decode once they pass through our firewall." Thus, the law department has the benefit of the ASP solution – less IT support needed while also enjoying the security of guarding its own data.