Due to the nature of their business, law firms possess a tremendous volume of valuable documents and data, which are extremely attractive to hackers of a variety of motivations. Successful cyber-attacks can cause a severe negative impact to a law firm’s operations and catastrophic damage to a law firm’s reputation.
According to the recently published 2020 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, the number of law firms experiencing a known security breach increased to 29 per cent in 2020. The survey notes that “despite the ethical issues and pending challenges, the use of certain security tools remains at less than half of respondents,” and only 36 per cent of the respondents have committed to cyber insurance policies.
This paper seeks to help all organisations and institutions, not just law firms, better understand the threats they face and why they should work toward better cyber hygiene, and a more proactive incident and threat management strategy. First, I review why law firms are attractive cyber targets and how compromising these firms is a high priority to threat actors. I will define the concept of “cyber hygiene” and show why it is critical to maintaining IT…
