Law Firm Cybersecurity: 3 Best Practices to Keep You Safe
Cybersecurity incidents are on the rise and unfortunately, law firms are attractive targets for cybercriminals.
However, it isn’t just external threats you need to worry about.
Every employee has the ability to either intentionally or accidentally compromise the security of your firm. This is why it’s so important to take a proactive approach to maintaining strong cybersecurity protections.
Here are three simple ways to improve your firm’s cybersecurity.
Draft an Acceptable Use Policy
An acceptable use policy (AUP) explicitly outlines the rules employees must follow in regards to the firm’s network, software, computers, and mobile devices. It clearly states how employees should and shouldn’t use both employer-provided technology and personal mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
One of the main reasons to implement an AUP is the ability of employees to either deliberately or inadvertently compromise the security of your company. Ipswitch, a provider of IT management software, reported that nearly three-fourths of security breaches are due to employee actions (either intentional or accidental).
An AUP ensures employees understand their responsibilities in regards to technology use and helps educate them on identifying possible cybersecurity threats, which can help decrease your firm’s risk.
Develop an Incident Response Plan
Ideally, your firm will never experience a data breach or cyberattack. Realistically, you need to be prepared. That’s why an incident response plan is essential.
The steps your firm takes immediately upon discovery of the issue will determine how extensive (and expensive) the damage will be. An effective incident response plan includes the following steps:
• Designate an incident response planning team
• Classify the type/extent of the incident
• Complete initial reporting
• Escalate the incident, as appropriate
• Inform affected individuals and organizations
• Investigate and collect evidence
• Mitigate further risks
• Execute recovery measures
Your incident response plan should be regularly evaluated and updated. With existing threats continuously evolving and new threats appearing almost daily, you must take a proactive approach to maintaining strong cybersecurity protections.
Adopt Trusted, Cloud-Based Technology
Many law firms that favor on-premise or hosted solutions to cloud-based platforms will cite security as the reason they refuse to move their data to the cloud. But the truth is, cloud-based solutions are considerably more secure than on-premise or hosted software.
An on-site IT team may do periodic network vulnerability checks, but they have dozens of other issues to worry about. Providers of cloud legal solutions have employees dedicated exclusively to ensuring their IT infrastructure is as strong and secure as possible. Additionally, because updates to cloud solutions are deployed automatically, you’ll know the platform always has the latest patches and the provider has addressed known vulnerabilities.
The other key is to only work with technology partners you know you can trust. For example, LawPay’s online payment solution receives quarterly scans as well as an annual audit from a qualified security assessor, which means your data is guarded by advanced fraud protection and data encryption measures.
To learn more about LawPay and how we make it easy to securely accept payments, visit lawpay.com/aba.
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