PLENARY Long Beach, Calif. Q Research: Insecure Data

RESEARCH ✱ CONVENE ON SITE A Brighter,Shinier Long Beach L

ONG BEACH, CALIF., AVERAGES 345 DAYS of sunshine a year, but I was glad for the drizzling rain that fell on the first evening of a fam tour hosted by the Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau on Oct. 24–26. The pearl-gray fog provided an extra layer of atmosphere as we dined on lobster bisque and Dover sole aboard the Queen Mary, a luxury transatlantic ocean liner built in the 1930s and now permanently docked in Long Beach harbor as a floating museum, hotel, and meetings space. The ship’s Art Deco interior is newly gleaming after recent extensive upgrades. The Queen Mary’s renovations are only one of a series of improved and new facilities that Long Beach has unveiled, including an $8-mil- lion makeover at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center. Long Beach has become a “very good boutique convention city,” said Long Beach CVB President and CEO Steve Goo-

dling, “if you have a meeting of 1,200 and are looking to take over the city.” But the city can also accommodate blockbusters. The fam tour coincided with The Women’s Conference 2010 — which, with 30,000 attendees, is the largest women’s conference in the world. On Monday, I talked with Megan Rodriguez,

the CVB’s public relations manager, about the city’s new hotels over an avocado omelet at a cozy diner downtown. I was staying across the harbor at the new, 178-suite Residence Inn Long Beach Downtown, where my suite had a full kitchen, a granite shower, and a spectacu- lar view of the Pacific Ocean. After breakfast, I toured the sleek, 138-

room AVIA, with meeting space for groups of up to 200. The property has a cabana-lined rooftop pool and meeting rooms that open onto landscaped terraces. Long Beach’s culi- continued on page 27

HIGH COST OF

THE

INSECURE DATA:

$49,246

Estimated average value of a lost laptop, based on replacement cost, detection, forensics, data breach,

lost intellectual property costs, lost productivity, and legal, consulting,

and regulatory expenses

$6.75 million

Average

per-incident cost of a data breach in 2009

Total cost of identity fraud in the United States in 2009

billion ✱

$54 SOURCE: Safemark Systems

(www.safemark.com), based on studies

by the Ponemon Institute and Javelin Strategy & Research

26

pcma convene December 2010

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