Law is one of the most influential as well as diverse fields that exists in the economy. Between corporate law, criminal law, personal injury law, and so many other facets of the industry, there are numerous possibilities for a law practice. No matter what type of firm you manage, running a law practice is certainly an arduous task, and it becomes even more challenging when factoring in the possibility of cyber-attacks. Cyber crimes are a reality in the field of law, and since there are numerous ways a firm can have its data breached, you need to prepare for these types of attacks.
Law firms have an immense amount of sensitive data, ranging from client information to financial records, and because of the delicate nature of the industry, it is imperative that everything is protected. Due to the possibility for financial or other types of gain by hackers, law firms are often attacked by malicious cyber criminals. This is why it is crucial for law practices to protect themselves from digital risk.
Learning about digital risk and how to manage it is necessary for any law firm. Digital risk can be divided up into the classes of defending online brand security, attack surface reduction, and data loss detection. In order to defend your practice’s online brand security, you need to protect your social media accounts and other online platforms, as well as identify phishing scams by looking for imposters posing as your brand.
Managing attack surface reduction includes protecting your business’ IT infrastructure (such as misconfigured file sharing protocols, open ports, and weak or expiring certificates). Finally, data loss detection entails regularly monitoring for data that has been exposed by hackers.
Understanding the numerous aspects of digital risk allows you learn how to manage it and defend your law practice from it. There are numerous procedures that will assist you with digital risk management, and if you want to stay protected from these types of attacks, you must know learn what to do to keep hackers away. Firstly, you will want to assess your law practice and evaluate all of the sensitive data your company has, ranging from client information to systems data.
Next, you have to comprehend the types of threats facing your practice, think about the opportunities hackers would take, and try to imagine where your vulnerabilities lie. You also need to monitor for unsolicited exposure – look through the open, deep, and dark web by searching through paste sites, criminal forums, git repositories, and more.
Once you assess your digital risk, you then need to take action to manage and defend yourself against it.You need to set up different types of mitigation techniques: tactical, operational, and strategic. Tactical mitigation will include reducing attack surface, removing offending content from websites and network blocking actions. Operational will entail implementing a monitoring strategy, integrating with incident response processes, and embedding in security operations. Finally, strategic will involve updating risk and threat models, and measuring, managing, and reporting digital risk. All of these practices combined will certainly aid in managing your law firm’s digital risk.
Because law firms are such sensitive businesses, when running your practice, you need to ensure the safety and security of all your data. No information will be safe, unless you take the steps to make sure that it will be. By implementing and applying a quality digital risk management strategy, you will be one step closer to safeguarding your law firm from malevolent cyber-attacks.