Having A Same Day Breach Response Plan For Your Law Firm
The legal industry is facing its most challenging obstacle to date and it’s not from their opposition – these attacks against law firms are coming from hackers. Once viewed as impenetrable to hackers, today’s law firm is a key target for cybercriminals.
Are you doing enough to protect your firm? While cybersecurity is partially a matter of prevention, you also need same day breach response planning.
Even If You’re Secure, You Need Same Day Breach Response
As of a few years ago, a third of in-house counsel respondents in “The State of Cybersecurity Report: an in-house perspective” reported that they had experienced a data breach – and cybercrime is only expected to grow, with the occurrence rate of data breaches estimated to increase by 22.5% each year up to 2023.
According to a recent study by the American Bar Association (ABA):
- 75% are using some anti-virus software.
- 58% of responding firms are using a firewall or anti-phishing software.
- 33% are using email encryption software.
- 25% are using device encryption software.
- 17% have some directory security in place.
- 25% have an employee training program involving cybersecurity.
This is why cybersecurity can’t be ignored – none of this is meant to scare you into buying overpriced firewalls or paying huge consultation fees with cybersecurity firms. It’s simply about making sure you know the reality of cybercrime in the legal industry, and that you’re doing what’s necessary to protect against it.
Do You Have A Same Day Breach Response Plan?
If you think you may have been the victim of ransomware, phishing, or another type of cybercrime, your first step is to get in touch with your IT support immediately. If you haven’t already, don’t hesitate to hire professional cybersecurity experts to handle your same day breach response processes. Hardening your systems against attacks and thereby making yourself a harder target for cybercriminals is absolutely critical.
Beyond that, make sure to follow these three steps:
- Isolate The Damage: Your first move when an attack occurs is to isolate the computer from the network to prevent further access. Remove the network cable from the tower or laptop and turn off your networking functions (the Wi-Fi settings). Do this manually even if you have security software that claims to shut down the connection for you.
- Power Down: You also need to shut down your computer to prevent damage to your hard drive. Ideally, your anti-virus and anti-spyware will prevent the attacker from getting that far, but you still need to remove it from the computer to protect it fully.
- Control Access: Resetting your passwords is also critical. You should be sure to create entirely new passwords and avoid re-using them at any point. Don’t forget to check any accounts linked to your computer, including social media profiles, email accounts, online banking, and any other potential targets.
This is a lot to handle on your own right? You’ve got a caseload, after all, so you likely don’t have the time to see to all this, and it’s not necessarily something you should trust to a paralegal that doesn’t have any experience with IT or cybersecurity.
BlueHat Cyber can help – we offer same day breach response services that manage the plans, procedures, and guidelines in the handling of data breach events at your office(s), or via any of our servers or mobile devices.
The incident response plan encompasses procedures on incident response engagement and how the incident response team will communicate with the rest of the organization, with other organizations, with law enforcement and provides guidance on federal and local reporting notifications processes.
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