Other IT managers whose operations were in Katrina's path also are still working to put stronger defenses in place. For example, since Katrina rendered the Gulfport, Miss., headquarters of Hancock Bank uninhabitable, the bank has been running its IT operations from a building that previously housed its training staff. Now Hancock is building a hardened data center, also in Gulfport but 10 miles from the ocean and at a higher elevation than the former headquarters, said Norman McDonald, manager of information security and business continuity at the bank.

However, the new data center isn't scheduled to be completed until next spring. "We will be facing the upcoming hurricane season in a less than ideal situation buildingwise," he said.

In addition, the bank -- which ran its IT systems from disaster recovery hot sites in Chicago and Atlanta for two and a half months after Katrina -- began a project late last month to set up capabilities for replicating data to the Chicago facility. That work should be completed within 60 days, according to McDonald. The goal, he said, is to have the bank's customer-facing systems back up within four hours of being shut down in the event of a hurricane or other disaster.

One of the main challenges for the New Orleans-based Ochsner Clinic Foundation during the aftermath of Katrina was its inability to generate enough power at times to cool its primary data center. The health care provider, which operates a 600-bed hospital in the city and medical clinics throughout Louisiana, has since added a fourth diesel generator and acquired some portable spot chillers, said CIO Lynn Witherspoon.

Ochsner also has tried to improve the redundancy of its WAN by adding a third Internet circuit in Covington, La., and burying an existing one that previously was located on a telephone pole on the hospital grounds, he added.