ASIS 2011 Conference

ASIS 2011 Conference

 

I personally attended the conference this year. I really wanted to see what was and was not going on.

The attendance at this conference was consistent with previous years the reported number of about 20,000,although they would not share the numbers of paid attendance vs. the thousands of “attendees” who were exhibitors and people with free day passes to the exhibit floor. Here is my comment from my Conference Report of the last show we reported in 2009: I think most of the exhibitors had mixed emotions as to the value of this show vs. all the other venues at which to exhibit. We will see what happens next year.

Considering the number of Background Screeners exhibiting, I would not have gone to the conference were it not only a one-day round trip for me. Essentially, the background screening industry has concluded that this show does not warrant their attendance. There were zero pure background screeners exhibiting. Sure, the security guard companies that also do backgrounds were there [Securitas (Pinkerton), G4S (Wackenhut), Allied Barton (HR Plus)], but, with the exception of HR Plus, these did not feature their Employee Screening services. NBD was there but not as a retail CRA. CrimShield was exhibiting but they geared their marketing toward credentialing of vendors and vendor employees. That’s it!

No other companies to talk about except TLO, Hank Asher’s latest iteration of his “master” database of everything you wanted to know about anyone. TLO stands for The Last One (Hank previously built Autotrack-Data Base Technologies bought by ChoicePoint and then rebuilt it as Accurint which was then bought by Lexis-Nexis). His new database was released earlier this year and they had a lot of activity in their exhibit area.

So, is this a dead conference for background screeners? While that seems to be the general consensus, I’m not sure. The feedback I got was that while the Corporate Security function was rarely the decision maker in choosing an employment screening, they often did have an influence and they surely knew the decision maker at their company. Worth the cost? Maybe, but surely not thought so by most.

On the other hand, if I were a CRA, it might be very smart to be the one exhibitor at the conference with the primary concentration in background checks. Has the world really changed that much since 2007 when 21CRAs exhibited?

Berg Consulting Group

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