Legal professionals are consistently at risk of breaking client confidentiality due to the fast-paced and challenging nature of the work at hand. This is why it is of paramount importance to make cybersecurity their first priority. Lawyers need to be alert and cautious when handling their clients information, especially when dealing with legal matters on the move. No information in today’s world is ever secure.
With lawyers and law firms however, who are constantly entrusted with highly sensitive information about their clients as a course of business, the need for effective data security is of higher critical importance.
Single, point-in-time assessment is no longer good enough. The majority of third-party risk management programs will begin as a compliance effort, with point-in-times assessments completed during or immediately after the contracting process. The pace of technological innovation is staggering. Ongoing assessments and threat monitoring need to be carried out daily to understand the constantly evolving risks that are posed to your data by third-party vendors.
End user education becomes essential to the success of any security endeavor. The firm’s end users need to be educated regularly so that they understand the behaviour and steps required in case of a breach. It is no longer about being secure, it’s about being secure in a provable way.
Most industries have a common set of best-practice security measures to protect sensitive data. Law firms and the legal industry in general are no exception. It can be broken up into several divisions.
4 must do’s to protect client information during a Legal Case:
- Encrypting client records
Lawyers need to responsibility advise their clients on the confidentiality risks versus the convenience advantages of various types of electronic communication.
However, considering email’s large amount of vulnerabilities to breach- does emailing a client confidential data violate the attorney’s duty to protect client privilege?
The legal field is reacting. Here are the identified circumstances in which email may be too insecure for confidential client communication-and therefore unethical for an attorney to use:
- Emailing to or from an account that is shared with others;
- Emailing an account that a third-party may access, especially when that third party is party to a dispute;
- Emailing to or from a public or borrowed computer, or one on an unsecure network;
- Emailing a device the attorney knows isn’t password protected;
- Sending an email that the attorney suspects law enforcement will review, with or without a warrant.
- Using a secure enterprise communications solution for a more secure way for document transfer & collaboration.
Never compromise on your Legal communications. SaltDNA uses the highest grade encryption techniques to allow the user to voice call, text message, conference call or send files with the highest confidence.
All communications using SaltDNA are encrypted end-to-end using the latest and greatest encryption technologies meaning you never have to worry about your calls being intercepted or your information being compromised. Privacy and security is a priority for SaltDNA and we understand its importance in the enterprise.
One new feature that will be particularly useful within the Legal Industry is the Broadcasting feature. This will allow law firms to push out live alerts to large groups of users within an organisation. The new broadcasting capability will enable organisations to send messages, share images and documents as well as assign the level of severity to an alert. In order to further highlight critical issues, SaltDNA have allocated different alert tones for different severity levels. These elements will allow organisations to effectively broadcast information such as emergency services alerts, data breaches or environmental warnings to a large number of users with the confidence that it is secure.
- Implement better password policies
You could be exposing your own private data as well as your clients. The majority of hacking still happens via guessing or stealing a company’s login to a particular system or program and then using it to gain access to data. For each employee that has an account within your organisation- that is another entry point.
The first step is to make a complex password. Include characters, numbers, symbols and uppercase and lowercase. For very important documents it would be a good idea to add two-factor authentication.
Ideally, it would be best to use a combination of these strategies and create a password policy that makes it nearly impossible for a hacker to gain access to client data. A small number of organisations currently adopt a strategy that forces employees to change their enterprise passwords every month, this strategy should be more widely implemented.
- Keep up to date with upgrades.
You’re hard at work on your computer or device and a message suddenly pops up saying, “a software update is available”. You’re busy, so you click “cancel” instead of “install”, thinking you’ll get to it later, but you never do. Sound common?
The truth is it’s easy to skip software updates because they can take up a few moments of our time, and may not seem that crucial. However this is a mistake that keeps the door open for hackers to access your private information, putting you at risk for identity theft, loss of money, credit, and more.
Hackers are always searching for a new way to access data. In order to protect yourself and your clients data keep your security up-to-date to get the best protection. The software used to block unauthorised access to digital data is routinely updated to protect your information against the latest computer virus.
With careful thought and a few proactive steps, law firms can reassure their clients that the customer’s sensitive data is safe in their hands. Is your firm doing enough to protect customer data? If not, contact us to speak with the SaltDNA team today about how we can help secure your legal matters.
About Salt Communications
Salt Communications, ranked in the top half in the Cybersecurity 500, provides a fully enterprise-managed software solution that enables absolute privacy in mobile communications. It is easy to deploy and uses multi-layered encryption techniques to meet the highest of security standards. The Salt Communications Desktop and Mobile apps are intuitive and easy to install and use. The Salt Communications Communication Manager provides a console for tight management of users and can be configured for the management of regulatory compliance. Salt Communications is headquartered in Belfast, Ireland, for more information visit saltcommunications.com.
