It is important for law firms to keep their clients personal and private data safe and secure, as the client’s information is valuable to both the law firm and clients. Most of the law firms are risking their client’s information by lacking a security budget, processes, and training.

Providing privacy and security to a client’s data helps to gain the trust of the clients. When the data gets stolen or lost the clients loses trust in the law firm. Cybersecurity is important to keep the client’s personal data secure.

Common threats which law firms face

• Ransomware: the hackers take the system in control and files until a ransomware is paid.
• Data theft: the hackers get access to a client’s personal information and sell them online.
• Man-in-the-middle attack: a hacker modifies communications between two-parties without being distinguished.
• Phishing: to get sensitive information the hackers pose as a trustworthy.
• Password attack: the hackers can get access to your account by hacking the password.

To avoid and deal with such risks and threats, a law firm should adopt and follow the following steps:

• Implement Employee Training Programs

The first step a law firm should take is to train their employees about cybersecurity. More than 60% of the workers in a law firm believe that human errors are the largest risk to a law firm cybersecurity.

A law firm should train their employees about falling for phishing emails, handling customer data, sending sensitive information via email, password management and much more.

• Enable Two-Factor Authentication

The attackers can hack the password easily by brute force. Once they hack the password they can steal the client’s personal data and hacks to the back-end of the internal systems, and have the access and control to everything. To stop this from happening, it is important to have stronger authentications methods like adding a second factor.

The two-factor authentication is used to make the login stronger. It contains few steps like adding your fingerprint, inserting a smart card containing an identity documentation into your computer, having a code notification sent to your phone, also known as a “one-time password (OTP)”, verifying your identity using a Digital Certificate, also known as ‘Client Authentication’.

• Make Sure Your Software Is up to Date

To avoid hacking law information a firm should keep their system up-to-date as new vulnerabilities are found every day in different Internet browsers, desktop apps, and operating systems. The IT department controls all the internal system from a centralized system or cloud so it helps to update all the computers at once.