Legal Risk and Data Protection

The average cost of litigation for a data breach is $4.45 million, including fines, attorney fees, and lost revenue. Legal risk can be mitigated using the right data protection strategies. Imagine you have 200 employees with access to private information for each of your legal clients. Without any cybersecurity in place, a cyber-attacker could craft a phishing email and convince an employee to download malware. This malware could then use the employee’s computer and credentials to access sensitive data. The attacker’s activity could go unnoticed for months until a threat intelligence researcher discovers your client data available on darknet markets. 

Legal professionals must follow government regulations and compliance for financial and healthcare data, so suffering from a data breach without the right cybersecurity in place can lead to hefty fines. Having the right security strategies in place not only mitigates potential fines but also mitigates the extent to which an attacker can gain access to sensitive information. Email security, web content filtering, and email archiving are critical steps in protecting data. Content filtering stops users from accessing phishing sites, email security blocks malicious messages, and email archiving keeps a copy of files for legal discovery. 

Take email as an example. You might know not to send sensitive data out to a third party, but attackers have so many more ways to get at your data. Phishing can trick you into divulging your password or disclosing sensitive information. Even people who are aware of phishing can be vulnerable to it. System administrators and security personnel have been responsible for major data breaches in the past. It’s a mistake to make humans the first and only line of defense from phishing. 

To stay compliant, anti-phishing strategies should be implemented on your business email server. Anti-phishing stops messages from reaching employee inboxes, which removes the responsibility of data protection from a human recipient and gives it to artificial intelligence (AI) and threat intelligence baked into cybersecurity products. Humans make mistakes, much more than an anti-phishing solution returns a false negative. Insider threats are the biggest risk to the security of your client data. 

What Law Firms Can Do to Protect Client Data 

Cybersecurity products can be complex, but TitanHQ solutions are quick to deploy for legal professionals or managed service providers. A few core solutions defend against major online threats and help lower breach risks. 

For example, allowing staff to browse the internet with no protections is a high-risk administrative action. Malware and ransomware are commonly downloaded from the internet. It could be a drive-by attack, where the user thinks they are downloading legitimate software or clicking on a link from a malicious email. Once the malware is installed, it can run silently on the network and steal data, or ransomware can scan the network to find sensitive files and irreversibly encrypt them until the business pays a ransom. 

Web content filters block risky websites in browsers. Cloud solutions utilize updated blacklists to prevent known malicious domains, blocking threats before they reach users. Administrators can whitelist required sites as needed. 

Other key applications include EncrypTitan for encrypting files, SpamTitan for blocking spam, and TitanHQ SAT for phishing tests and user training. These tools protect data and raise awareness of cybersecurity. 

Security awareness training also covers social engineering attacks. Social engineering and phishing attacks often go hand in hand. Attackers using this strategy will send a phishing email and follow up with a phone call. The email may contain an invoice, and the phone call is intended to prompt the target into paying the invoice. The invoice is fraudulent, so the attacker must convince the target to send money to the attacker’s account. These attacks are typically coordinated and sophisticated, involving multiple attackers. Attackers research the organization and often know names, hierarchy, and organizational details to be more convincing. 

For some legal firms, it might be better to hire a professional. Managed service providers also offer complete cybersecurity deployment and handle all the technical aspects of data protection. Legal firms should find a provider that will deploy email-based and web-based security to ensure that attorneys are protected from many common threats. Vulnerabilities are commonly found among staff members, so attackers often target people within the organization. Email security and web content filters address many common vulnerabilities that target human errors and oversights. 

TitanHQ offers law firms solutions compliant with HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and FINRA.  

Protect your legal practice, see how TitanHQ defends attorneys and legal teams against malware, ransomware, and email threats.