SNW Europe breaks all attendance records … New Conference Format Attracts 1,564 Visitors from 20 countries.

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 in Records Management News

http://www.snseurope.com/snslink/news/news-full.php?id=13567

SNW Europe breaks all atten­dance records

Date: Thurs­day 19 Novem­ber 2009 Author: PHILIP ALSOP

New Con­fer­ence For­mat Attracts 1,564 Vis­i­tors from 20 coun­tries. At a time when other con­fer­ences and exhi­bi­tions are being can­celled or are see­ing dras­tic trans­for­ma­tions in a bid to con­tinue to attract sup­port and vis­i­tors, SNW Europe has con­firmed its sta­tus as the must-attend appoint­ment for IT and stor­age pro­fes­sion­als in EMEA. SNW Europe and its new co-located con­fer­ences Dat­a­cen­ter Tech­nolo­gies and Vir­tu­al­iza­tion World broke all atten­dance records this year. Tak­ing place under the ban­ner ‘The Power of 3′ the two-day event included over 130 ses­sions and despite the cur­rent eco­nomic cli­mate it was sup­ported by 55 spon­sors. The most excit­ing result how­ever was the marked increase in the num­ber of unique vis­i­tors: more than 1,500 attended over the two days, an increase of 11% on the pre­vi­ous year. Of these del­e­gates, 71% were end users, resellers, sys­tems inte­gra­tors, ana­lysts or jour­nal­ists, from over 20 coun­tries.   ‘The level of inter­est and sup­port shown by spon­sors and del­e­gates alike is a clear indi­ca­tor of the value that SNW Europe still holds even though other events have been strug­gling to secure sup­port,’ said Paul Trow­bridge, mar­ket­ing direc­tor for the three events. ‘Some of the con­fer­ence ses­sions were so busy that sev­eral late-comers had to stand; the case stud­ies pre­sen­ta­tions and the dis­cus­sions around Cloud Stor­age, Fibre Chan­nel and FCoE were par­tic­u­larly pop­u­lar.’   Bas van der Worp, stor­age admin­is­tra­tor at global health care com­pany Schering-Plough com­mented ‘I reg­u­larly attend SNW Europe because it is always a very worth­while use of my time. This year I came to talk to a num­ber of ven­dors and to learn more about solid state disk tech­nol­ogy. For me the con­fer­ence ele­ment of the event is one of the main attrac­tions.’   Alexan­der Liesch, IT man­ager at the Fraun­hofer Insti­tute for Com­puter Graph­ics Research (IGD) was also pleased with what he saw ‘I am cur­rently eval­u­at­ing the lat­est data backup solu­tions so I came to SNW Europe to see first-hand how they work and com­pare. Just like last year the con­fer­ence gave me the oppor­tu­nity to meet with ven­dors and improve my knowl­edge of the more recent tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ments. Two enthu­si­as­tic thumbs up from me.’     Ralf Liesen, IT man­ager at global sup­plier of health­care solu­tions Cerner shares the pos­i­tive views ‘This was my first time at SNW Europe. Over the two days I found the pre­sen­ta­tions on cloud stor­age and the Cloud Data Man­age­ment Inter­face par­tic­u­larly use­ful. For some­one like me who can­not spare too much time to talk to ven­dors and attend edu­ca­tional events, this con­fer­ence is an impor­tant appoint­ment in my cal­en­dar.’   Many of this year’s spon­sors have already expressed their inter­est in sup­port­ing the event again in 2010, when the con­fer­ence will once again take place in Frank­furt on 26th and 27th Octo­ber.   ‘We were really pleased with the level of activ­ity and the qual­ity of vis­i­tors that came to the 3PAR booth at SNW Europe,’ said Sue Gul­lon, EMEA mar­ket­ing man­ager at 3PAR. ‘We had some great con­ver­sa­tions with poten­tial cus­tomers that we are look­ing for­ward to turn into deals.’   ‘We used SNW Europe as the PR plat­form to launch our archiv­ing prod­uct and it could not have worked out bet­ter,’ said Vanessa Gam­lin, EMEA mar­ket­ing direc­tor at Bak­Bone. ‘We are plan­ning to come back next year.’   ‘For us there is absolutely no doubt about it: SNW Europe is the event to be at if you want to meet with qual­ity end users and that is why we have been spon­sor­ing the con­fer­ence for six years run­ning,’ said Ulrike Rueger, Direc­tor of Stor­age Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing at Fujitsu Tech­nol­ogy Solu­tions.   Sup­port­ing the three con­fer­ences this year were most of the industry’s lead­ing ven­dors includ­ing APC by Schnei­der Elec­tric, Bro­cade, Cisco, Cit­rix, DELL, EMC, Emulex, IBM and Quantum.

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research … To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,   Cary

Health Insurer Loses 1.5 Million Patient Records

Posted on Nov 20, 2009 in Records Management News

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/healthnet

Health Insurer Loses 1.5 Mil­lion Patient Records By Kim Zetter Novem­ber 19, 2009

A health insurer lost 1.5 mil­lion patient records last May but waited six months to dis­close the inci­dent. The data, which was stored on a portable disk drive that dis­ap­peared from the insurer’s office, was unen­crypted and included patient Social Secu­rity num­bers, bank account num­bers and health data, accord­ing to the Hart­ford Courant. The disk also con­tained per­sonal infor­ma­tion on at least 5,000 physi­cians. Health Net dis­cov­ered the loss in May but never informed patients, law enforce­ment or gov­ern­ment enti­ties, despite data breach laws in some states that require data spillers to notify vic­tims and state offi­cials when res­i­dents are affected by a breach. The insurer finally sent a let­ter to Connecticut’s attor­ney gen­eral and the state’s Depart­ment of Insur­ance this week.

Health Net claimed it took six months to deter­mine what data was on the miss­ing disk. It said that data on the disk was com­pressed and stored in an image for­mat that required spe­cial soft­ware to view, which was avail­able only to Health­Net. “Another day, another data breach,” said Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­eral Richard Blu­men­thal in a state­ment. “But com­pa­nies still don’t get it: Per­sonal infor­ma­tion is like cash and should be guarded with equal care.” Blu­men­thal vowed to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion and legal action against the insurer. About 450,000 of the patients affected by the data loss are res­i­dents of Con­necti­cut, which has a breach noti­fi­ca­tion law. Patients in Ari­zona, New Jer­sey and New York were also affected.

“My inves­ti­ga­tion will seek to estab­lish what hap­pened and why the com­pany kept its cus­tomers and the state in the dark for so long,” Blu­men­thal told the Hart­ford Busi­ness Jour­nal. “The company’s fail­ure to safe­guard such sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion and inform con­sumers of its loss — leav­ing them naked to iden­tity theft — may have vio­lated state and fed­eral laws. I will vig­or­ously and aggres­sively seek dam­ages, penal­ties and other appro­pri­ate reme­dies, if war­ranted.” On a sep­a­rate note, a sec­ond health insurer mailed 80,000 post­cards to Medicare recip­i­ents last week that listed the patient’s Social Secu­rity num­ber on the front of the card beneath the patient’s name. Uni­ver­sal Amer­i­can Action Net­work, a sub­sidiary of Uni­ver­sal Amer­i­can Insur­ance, blamed the com­pany that printed the cards for the error but didn’t explain why the com­pany had the patient Social Secu­rity num­bers in the first place. The data leak affected patients enrolled in the Med­icate Advan­tage plan, which uses a patient’s Social Secu­rity num­ber as his Medicare account number.

Com­pli­ments of File­Man Research To Sub­scribe to the File­Man Blog click here … http://www.carymcgovern.com/feed/

Best Per­sonal Regards,

Cary