With business taking over with technological advancements it's easy to say that cybersecurity risk also increases with it.
Success in the legal field is often determined by the results you can get for your clients, how many new clients you can bring in, and how up-to-date you are in technological standards. Technology is an essential part of any modern attorney practice.
As lawyers or legal professionals, client data security should be your highest priority with high client confidentiality standards, which means you have a high responsibility to do everything in your power to keep clients’ personal information safe and secure. Since clients trust lawyers with so much of their data, law firms make hot targets for cybercrime. These types of cyberattacks on your law firm can be costly, especially when they result in operational dysfunction, payments to attackers, and lawsuits and fines against your firm.
Law firm data security should be a top priority for any practice and here are 5 points to keep in mind for more safety and security in your firm.
1. Reinforce Stronger security passwords-
Is your password always like 12345678 or your birth date or name of your spouse? For cyber attackers it's like a piece of cake, they can crack it within minutes. Do you use the same password for every login or have you haven't changed your password for months?
Having a strong unguessable password is vital for your data security, keeping your password that is not related to your work or personal life is the accurate password. Train your employees to change passwords regularly and be cautious about sites that seem fishy.
2. Adopt Role-Based Authorization-
Giving access to every piece of data in your firm to all employees is also not healthy for your firm's data security. As you can't keep an eye on every employee's devices and software they transfer their files through.
Keeping your data sharing minimum and granting role-based access to employees is the safest bet as you'll have a record of where your data has been shared and accessed.
3. Employ Multi-Factor Authentication
Do you use multi-factor authentication in your firm? Or do you just have single login-based access to the information? Having multiple access and different employees accessing it, it's safe to have multi-factor authentication for access to information.
Verifying twice about who is accessing a piece of evidence makes it difficult for hackers to break in through multi-factor authentication.
4. Provide Cyber Security Data Training To Employees
It is equally important for employees to have basic training for cybersecurity and preventive measures for break-ins as you have all preventive measures taken into consideration. Employees knowing where they have to be cautious is vital for protecting your data.
For starting with basics you should train your employees on how you can deal with email attackers, phishing, and social engineering.
5. Encrypt
Never underestimate the power of encryption. Encryption can be a powerful shield for your data protection, whether it's stored in a hard drive, email, or just in notes. Encryption translates your data which then requires a key to decrypt.
You can also consider full disk encryption in case your disk is stolen. Encryption also protects your data with third-party applications to access it.
Conclusion
Why should you start protecting and putting your law firm's data security at the top of your priority list? Analyzing and improving your security standards and the ways you protect your data security as soon as possible is crucial because it will not only improve your security standards and open up to new improved better solutions but will also give you an insight into where you are lacking.
A lawyer is made by the reputation of his work but with reputation comes client satisfaction, a single breach in client data can cause you financial stress and with that, it will significantly cause distress on the quality of work you do. Protecting your client information is just a good thing to do. Is ethically and professionally your job as an attorney. It will not just protect your data security but also will improve your overall efficiency.
