There are main offices and home offices, but a lawyer is typically always on the go to collect information for a case or visiting clients, partners or consultants. When working offsite at locations like airports, hotels, coffee shops and public locations, using the Internet for cloud access means trusting the provider to protect and store sensitive data on their servers – a data breach waiting to happen. Hackers are already established in many public areas, waiting to steal victims’ data, hold files hostage through encryption ransomware or delete documents altogether. A 2022 Cost of Data Breach Study by Ponemon Institute LLC reported that 45% of breaches were cloud based and the average total cost of a data breach was $4.35 million – a risk that should automatically be too costly to take.
Firms need to have proper security protocols in place about using secure technology to protect their data when accessing or sharing information. According to the American Bar Association’s 2022 Cybersecurity Survey, 89% of respondents reported having one or more policies governing secure technology use. But this number can be deceiving as the report notes that only 67% have an email use policy, followed by 63% with an acceptable use policy for computers, 60% for internet use and 59% for remote access.
Information can be compromised and hacked through all the above avenues, so it is vital that firms not only ensure each policy is up to par, not falling for misleading “secure” language, but also expand and build a more robust, full-picture security standard to be applied across their organisation. Security starts with people and their adoption of policies, so data security hygiene is extremely critical for legal firms and all their partners, subcontractors, experts and others.
The solution is a cloud in your pocket that you control, carry with you without concerns about loss or theft and can access safely to retrieve a needed file.
