Tuesday, 28 October 2008

UK Regional Interest Group Workshop: Compliance and Governance - New Initiatives for E-mail Archiving and Retrieval, 11th November 2008, London

eema, the Independent European e-Identity & Security Association, has today announced that the next UK Regional Interest Group workshop will take place on 11th November at the British Computer Society (BCS) headquarters in London. The workshop, hosted by the BCS Security Forum, aims to address the opportunities and risks associated with e-mail archiving and how UK and international businesses can ensure speedy and accurate retrieval and email operational efficiency.

Currently, there are approximately two million companies and 50 million users of electronic communication in the UK alone. There is an increasing need to identify personnel integrity threats, such as unethical use of email and Instant Message communication and organisations are continually pressured with the requirement to comply with communications retention regulations. To date, the evaluation of content and usage remains largely a manual process.

The UK Regional Interest Group workshop will bring together IT professionals from across Europe who have an influence on e-mail archiving policy and systems, to discuss the impact of such processes on commercial and business applications. The agenda will feature an in-depth look at the Intelligent Content Evaluation of Communication (ICEcom) project, a toolkit sponsored by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and designed to visualise information gathered from emails and attachments and provide a holistic solution to capture electronic communication.

An insight into ICEcom will be presented by the organisations that make up the ICEcom consortium (intY Ltd, Fortium ICA Ltd, Loughborough University, Essential Computing, Pera Innovation Ltd). This session will look at the advanced technologies and strategies behind the ICEcom proposition, including how data will be captured and retained, the new and advanced technologies available for evaluating textual context, how to track the source and distribution of inappropriate content and how to control the transition to the ICEcom solution.

In addition, a number of high profile guest speakers will form panels for question and answer sessions and best practice discussion. These include Chairman of the eema UK Regional Interest Group and Strategy Manager ID Cards, PKI and Messaging at Siemens UK, Martin Linda; Partner Account Manager at Microsoft Online Services, Ted Shultz and Professor at Katholieke University in Leuven, Jos Dumortier.

Dumortier will be delivering a short presentation on legal aspects of e-mail, focusing on electronic data preservation. "There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about this area amongst business professionals and we will offer some solutions about how to tackle this," says Dumortier. "Events like this are of great importance and are particularly useful because they bring good practice and experience in this domain to a wider audience."

"The workshop will allow those interested in this field to hear from and talk with users and representatives from suppliers in a neutral forum," adds Executive Director of eema, Roger Dean. "It is a great opportunity to find out about everything from the legal perspectives of e-mail archiving, to a discussion of the results of an email classification survey of over 200 organisations throughout the UK."

eema will be holding its UK Regional Interest Group 'Compliance and Governance: New Initiatives for E-mail and Archiving and Retrieval' on November 11th. For more information about the UK Regional Interest Group, details on registering for the workshop and more information about eema, please visit www.eema.org

About eema
For 21 years, eema has been Europe’s leading independent, non-profit e-Identity & Security association, working with its European members, governmental bodies, standards organisations and interoperability initiatives throughout Europe to further e-Business and legislation.

eema’s remit is to educate and inform around 160 Member organisations (and over 1,500 Member contacts) on the latest developments and technologies, at the same time enabling Members of the association to compare views and ideas. The work produced by the association with its Members (projects, papers, seminars, tutorials and reports etc) is funded by both membership subscriptions and revenue generated through fee-paying events. All of the information generated by eema and its members is available to other members free of charge.

Examples of papers produced recently are:- Towards Understanding Identity, Spam and e-mail Abuse Management, Role based Access Control - A User Guide, Password Synchronisation, Secure messaging within and between User Organisations. eema members, based on a requirement from the rest of the Membership, contributed all of these papers. Some are the result of many months' work, and form part of a larger project on the subject.

Any organisation involved in e-Identity or Security (usually of a global or European nature) can become a Member of eema, and any employee of that organisation is then able to participate in eema activities. Examples of organisations taking advantage of eema membership are Unilever, Volvo, Shell, Hoffman la Roche, KPMG, Magyar Telecom Rt, National Communications Authority, Hungary, Microsoft, HP, and the Norwegian Government Administration Services to name but a few.

Visit www.eema.org for more information or contact the association on +44 1386 793028 or at info@eema.org Editorial Contacts Graham Thatcher / Joanna Cannon / Alex Kenchington MCC International Tel: 01962 888100 Email: eemapr@mccint.com Url : www.mccint.com