Storing the customer’s records in a confidential and secure manner is a touchstone of the law practice. Digital data has now become more-and-more portable in form of smartphones, USB drives, tablets, etc. With the emergence of cloud computing and its rapid adoption in legal agencies, it has now a challenge to keep me safe from law firm data breaches. Daily new cases and high-profile data leakage incidents capture the attention of the public crowd. A huge amount of data at vendors, financial companies, and online services fall victim to ransomware and theft. But do you think that small agencies (majorly, law firms), are vulnerable to data breach incidents too? What are the causes behind Cyber attacks against law firms, and how can industries be safe from them? Get answers to all these questions here in this post!
Keep The Fact In Mind – A data exposure incident occurs when confidential data is used by an individual who is unauthorized; whether targeted or random, intentionally or unintentionally.
What Causes Law Firm Data Breaches?
The motive of Cybercriminals often comprises of financial profit, but not always. In general, the causes for data exposures are external threats on connected PCs or emails, which have malicious attachments or links. Other comprises of the stolen devices, disgruntled employees, and human errors. For example – Ransomware is a unique type of nefarious software, which holds the computer’s data until and unless the required ransom is not paid to the intruder. Usually, the ransom is in the form of hard-to-trace cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Cybersecurity experts found that Ransomware is usually caused by computers because of opening attachments or links in spam emails. This allows hackers to cast a broad net that is consolidated with the perspective of financial profit, making it a common source to perform threat, especially for amateur hackers.
Users can consider Ransomware as one kind of data loss, which can be reduced up to a major extent through data backup solutions. If the sufferer has a current and complete backup of essential records, inaccessibility because of ransomware is just a temporary inconvenience. Surely, hackers are not going to gain anything, if this kind of computer user is the owner of a targeted PC or company. Still, it should be the role of the administrator to find and fix the failure point, which permitted ransomware to enter in.
Measures to Mitigate Law Firm Data Breaches
- 24*7 Data Encryption – The very first step to fight Cyber attacks against law firms is to use data encryption solutions. The information stored on the cloud should be secured via encryption algorithms. They should be present all the time – when data is at rest and in transmit mode. This measure will reduce the risk of data loss because of unauthorized access and stolen devices. It secures complete records of information stored on a PC or phone, offering the best cloud data security in comparison to the password-protected device.
- Regular Training Sessions – At every legal company, everyone should be trained with safety standards to be safe from law firm data breaches. Workers should be known at least with basic Cybersecurity precautions like recognizing emails, which might be for ransomware or phishing attempts. Although there are online training courses available for the same, it would be better if this training session is organized face-to-face. Also, companies should organize these sessions on a monthly basis, so that officials don’t forget them in the future. A regular dose is required for employees to reduce data leakage incidents due to human mistakes.
- Cyber Security Consultation – Legal companies can benefit themselves from expertise level of assistance on data security evaluation and enhancement. The scope of the Cyber security assessment and service package will be based upon the legal company’s financial and perceived risk. This measure to be safe from law firm data breaches can include:
- DLP products, advising, and execution
- Service at the time of incident occurrence
- Physical facility penetration testing
- Digital penetration testing
- Social engineering testing
- Incident response planning
- Make Use of CASB App – In today’s date, it is complicated to separately adopt cloud computing security measures and implement them. Instead, a comprehensive solution is suitable that comprises of all features within it, which are needed to be safe from Cyber attacks against law firms. This kind of solution exists in the form of ‘CASB software’, which is a third-party security service for cloud users. The software offers solutions like DLP, Single Sign-on, IAM, access controls, etc., which are needed to protect online information. Talking about finance, the cost of one CASB product is much less than the total price of separate cloud security solutions.
Law Firms Have To Be Serious Regarding Cyber Security
Either with your wish or without your wish, it is compulsory to adopt cloud security solutions in today’s date. There are many automated solutions (CASB vendors) available in the marketplace who only and only provide security-as-a-service. They render an integrated platform from where it will become easy to achieve strong prevention from law firm data breaches. The owners of law agencies will be able to focus more on their actual working, instead of dedicating their attention to cloud security. So, it’s better to give security in hands of cloud access security brokers and mitigate yourself from this stress!