Legal
Navigating Cyber Risks
“Lawyers are failing at cybersecurity"
Cyber Stats
Legal professionals have access to clients’ most confidential information like intellectual property, trade secrets, business strategies, M&A and other personal matters, but securing that data from cyber criminals and hackers has become increasingly challenging.
- 61% of law firm data breaches involved the use of stolen credentials, often started with phishing emails
- In 2020, 2x as many reported law firm data breaches vs 2019
- 33% of all law firms experienced a security breach in 2020
- 34% of lawyers reported they lost billable hours as a result of the breach
- 96% of IT leaders in the legal industry believe an insider breach (EE’s and 3rd Party contractors) to be a significant risk for their organization
- 21% of law firms reported they don’t know if they’ve ever been breached, with an alarming 62% of firms of 100+ lawyers not knowing either.
Ethical and Professional Obligations
Risk & Business Impact
Trust is everything in the legal profession. Data breaches can have a disastrous impact on a law firms’ reputation, client trust, and result in malpractice allegations and lawsuits.
An attorney who allows such a disclosure to happen, deliberately or negligently, may be guilty of legal malpractice. This could lead to disciplinary action and strict violation fines and penalties.
There is a cost that affects most attacked law firms- downtime. As we have already seen, servers may be taken offline for hours, weeks, and even months. And in some cases, data and/or computers are unrecoverable.
Predictions & Beyond
Today, more and more corporate clients are requiring law firms to provide proof of their cybersecurity protocols to protect their confidential information
Law firms are adapting cloud-based technologies to satisfy clients demands for greater transparency and cooperation.
There’s no surprise about this one, but unsecure emails put you, your firm, and your clients at risk. Honestly, at this point any communication between you and your client should be encrypted.
Solutions
The 2020 Legal Technology Survey Report conducted by the American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center (LTRC), largely reflects only incremental progress in areas fundamental to adequate cybersecurity, in an age which cries out for a much more robust response by the profession to the cyber risks being faced today.
It is StrikeForces’ position that all law firms, regardless of size, should implement best practices that exceed the duties imposed under federal or state law or regulation and which may go beyond the ethical considerations of ABA Opinions.
Click on the links below to to learn how each of these technologies can help mitigate cyber exposures for your law practice.
