Law firms possess vast quantities of highly sensitive information that puts them at the top of hackers’ hit lists. Everything from trade secrets, to personally identifiable information, to private information that can be used for extortion are considered high-value material on the dark web.
Prominent leaks in recent years, including the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, have heightened client awareness of privacy and cyber security. Consequently, the legal sector is expected to demonstrate exemplary security posture in the face of rampant cyber crime.
To that end, every law firm must have these five essential cyber security capabilities to protect client data.
Cyber Security Expertise
No combination of even the best cyber security tools can replace the knowledge, skills and abilities of certified security analysts. Despite the rise of automated threat detection tools that minimize false positives, access to cyber security experts remains necessary for threat intelligence gathering, selection of the most effective tools, fine-tuning of threat detection systems, and incident response to alerts and indicators of compromise (IOCs).
SIEM
The list of available security solutions is long and growing: antivirus, next-generation firewalls, anti-spam, intrusion detection systems, endpoint detection and response, mobile device managers and many more.
24×7 Continuous Monitoring
Even with a SIEM, continuously monitoring network traffic is a complex endeavor. This 24/7, 365 process can overwhelm the most seasoned IT operations teams
Incident Response Plans
Organizations must respond swiftly and effectively to IOCs to, ideally, prevent loss of data and other damages. If the threat progresses, however, the goal becomes containing the threat to prevent further damage to the organization, or to implement a disaster recovery plan.
Security Operations Center
All of the above are central components of the security operations center (SOC), a critical element of any modern cybersecurity strategy. For law firms, the combination of full-time expertise, a SIEM, continuous monitoring and incident response seemed like a pipe dream, and up until recently, it was.
