May 26, 2005

John Occhipinti from Woodside Fund Selected by SVASE to Moderate Data Leakage and Privacy Panel

Gartner Reports That 70% of Confidential Data Leakage is from within the Organization

May 26, 2005 Redwood Shores, CA: Woodside Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm, today announced that managing director John Occhipinti, was selected by SVASE to moderate a panel entitled “Data Leakage and Privacy: Reality or Paranoia?” SVASE, a leading nonprofit Bay Area organization dedicated to helping technology entrepreneurs, chose Occhipinti because of his expertise on a wide-range of subjects including security, RFID and enterprise software.

“Security leaks and other breaches of confidential information have been around for a long time, but these issues have sprung to the forefront with recent headlines and increasing alarm at the risk of criminal abuse. These breaches not only jeopardize consumers but also the organizations entrusted to hold the information in supposedly secure environments,” said John Occhipinti from Woodside Fund. “ChoicePoint, Bank of America, Cisco, Wells Fargo, and AOL have all recently experienced highly publicized data leaks. A recent study by ASIS International, aided by PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, found that U.S. companies lost up to $59 billion in proprietary information and intellectual property in the span of one year.”

Chris Gill, SVASE’s newly appointed President and CEO, further commented, “In response to this, we have assembled a distinguished panel of experts who will explore this topic in detail, with the goal of separating hype and paranoia from reality.”

Further panel details:
The panel will be hosted at the Network Meeting Center, Techmart Building, 5201 Great America Parkway, in Santa Clara, on Thursday, June 2nd from 6:00pm until 9:00pm. An anticipated audience of over 125+ participants will hear subject matter experts and peers talk about the latest developments in Data Leakage and Privacy. The panel will include several leading technology developers and pioneer end-user corporations, which include:

• Charles Breed, Vice President, Mergers & Acquisitions, Symantec
• Barbara Lawler, Chief Privacy Officer, Hewlett Packard
• Elliott Lowen, Vice President, Wells Fargo
• Jim Pante, President & CEO, Tablus, Inc.
• Jay Reinemann, Director, VISA Strategic Investments

The panel will explore the growing trend of leakage of sensitive and confidential information at financial services companies, healthcare-related companies, and large enterprises that has resulted in significant financial losses to consumers and organizations. John Occhipinti commented that the discussion “will be sure to add light to the importance of data privacy, how data leakage can be prevented, and the magnitude of this problem.”

The Data Leakage and Privacy panel is hosted by SVASE. For additional information about the event, please go to www.svase.org.

About SVASE
Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs (SVASE), is the largest and fastest growing nonprofit association in Northern California dedicated exclusively to helping early stage entrepreneurs across all technology sectors build successful companies. Founded by a group of software engineers in 1995 and growing steadily ever since in spite of general economic downturns, SVASE hosts 10-15 events each month, attended by 400-600 technology executives and press.

John Occhipinti Bio
As managing director at Woodside Fund, John dedicates his expertise to the development of ventures in the enterprise software sector. John serves on the Board of Directors of Intalio, CenterBoard and Tacit Knowledge Systems. Prior to joining Woodside, John was an early employee at Netscape Communications. As Director of Sales, John led a team that drove the company’s first significant revenues, helping launch Netscape through its initial public offering. Later, John ran Netscape’s Electronic Software Distribution and Strategic Channel Sales groups. Prior to Netscape, John worked at Oracle Corporation, marketing and selling large-scale enterprise database technologies. John has both an MBA and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley.

About Woodside Fund
Woodside Fund is a leading venture capital firm that excels in developing early-stage technology companies. Founded in 1983, Woodside Fund attributes its long record of success to the high value it places on building productive partnerships with entrepreneurs, other investors and service providers. Typically a lead investor, Woodside Fund invests from $5 million to $10 million in early-stage software, fabless semiconductor and network infrastructure companies located primarily on the West Coast. Woodside Fund has more than $330 million in capital under active management. For more information, go to www.woodsidefund.com.

For all press related questions or comments, please contact Carole Sinclair at caroles@woodsidefund.com
or phone 925.818.1038.

www.woodsidefund.com

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