For legal firms, establishing a robust incident response plan is crucial for defending against and minimizing the risks of data breaches. Making this a priority ensures you can respond effectively, limit damage, and uphold business continuity, as law firms are primary cyber-attack targets due to sensitive data and often insufficient planning.
Legal professionals might be targets, but they don’t have to be victims of persistent threats. Incident response planning not only mitigates threats but also gives responsible staff more confidence during stressful events by providing contact lists and outlining critical systems that must be preserved.
Backups, cybersecurity monitoring tools, email archiving, and intrusion detection and prevention are a few strategies to help with incident response. TitanHQ can assist with incident response through its cybersecurity solutions, including email archiving, encryption, and content filtering, to help prevent future attacks.
Mitigate Damage from Data Breaches with Incident Response Planning
You may be aware that cybersecurity is essential for protecting data, but many legal professionals overlook the importance of risk management. Risk management comes in several forms, but incident response is necessary for the mitigation of data breaches during and after an event. No cybersecurity strategy is 100% foolproof, so incident response planning outlines the steps to mitigate a threat before it can cause further damage.
Incident response planning is a professional’s job. An auditor reviews the current cybersecurity systems, makes recommendations on monitoring and notification applications, and outlines every step, from contacting key stakeholders to shutting down systems and, finally, bringing them back into production mode. It’s a process that can take several months, depending on the size of the law firm and the firm’s infrastructure.
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What Does an Incident Response Plan Contain?
Every law firm and legal professional business runs its business differently. The setup of cybersecurity infrastructure typically depends on the type of data being stored and compliance regulations. For example, a law firm storing healthcare or financial information is subject to much stricter regulations governing their cybersecurity posture than those that don’t. Most compliance regulations require a form of incident response to mitigate the damage caused by a threat once it gains access to the environment.
The term “threat” encompasses malware, an insider stealing data, ransomware, or an outsider gaining unauthorized access to sensitive data. In the unfortunate event of a security breach, an incident response plan tells administrators and your IT people, including managed service providers, what to do next. A data breach is a stressful situation, but an incident response plan ensures that administrators follow the proper steps to contain the threat and recover data.
All incident response plans have different content, but they all have:
- Roles and responsibilities for staff members, including those in charge of authorizing downtime of critical systems.
- Classification of incidents to determine the severity of a breach.
- Steps to contain a threat.
- Post-incident documentation, lessons learned, and returning systems to production levels.
Creating an incident response plan is a job best left to professionals. They ensure all necessary actions are covered, even against advanced persistent threats that can leave backdoors and linger undetected. For example, ransomware may recur if not fully eradicated, highlighting the importance of thorough planning.
What’s Involved in Incident Response Planning?
The time required for incident response planning depends on your firm's size, staff, and data. For smaller firms, this might take weeks; for larger ones, it may take months.
The first phase— and possibly the most important —is the preparation phase. A professional will review your environment, interview stakeholders, identify risks, and determine impact of downtime for each critical system. Some threats impact the entire environment, while others affect only part of it. These systems must be audited to determine revenue and production losses if they need to be taken out of commission during a data breach.
Professionals will then review the current cybersecurity infrastructure to identify any existing vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are risks, and risks can be mitigated by implementing additional infrastructure, training employees to better identify threats (e.g., phishing and social engineering), and installing monitors and intrusion detection systems. What can be done to reduce risks depends on your own infrastructure and environment.
After the environment is audited and reviewed, the plan is created. The plan outlines strategies to quickly contain a threat, identifies who must be notified, determines who is responsible for the data, and specifies remediation procedures to remove the threat from the environment. After a threat is removed, the system must be tested to ensure that it’s been completely eradicated. A good incident response plan includes strategies for checking the system to ensure that the threat is no longer present in the environment, including shadow copies, in-memory copies, copies on backup drives, or other forms of backdoors.
After an incident response strategy is completed, corporations undergo a “lessons learned” phase. This phase reviews the initial action that allowed the threat to access data and outlines steps that can be taken to prevent similar incidents in the future. Changes may require adjustments in staff behavior, additional training for employees, or enhanced infrastructure to protect systems from vulnerabilities.
After Incident Response Planning
Once the plan is ready, simulated incidents help train staff, ensuring administrators know their roles and reducing stress during real events.
Plans should be reviewed regularly to address changes in cybersecurity, infrastructure, staff size, or emerging threats. Continual assessment ensures your law firm stays prepared for the latest risks.
To keep your law firm secure, TitanHQ has several cybersecurity solutions that protect from data breaches. Phishing security, email archiving, spam protection, security awareness training, and encryption services are among the cybersecurity solutions TitanHQ offers.
TitanHQ offers solutions that safeguard your environment against threats while also ensuring law firms remain compliant with the latest regulatory standards.
Even with strong cybersecurity, absolute security isn't possible. An incident response plan is essential as a backup when threats break through, and skipping it can invite unnecessary financial risk. Get Started Today.
Geraldine Hunt
- INCIDENT RESPONSE. LEGAL
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