Cybersecurity Best Practices for Law Firms

Law firms thrive on information, and so do cybercriminals. This is exactly why lawyers are the most frequent targets for cyber fraud and phishing attacks. Lawyers amass great volumes of confidential, proprietary and highly sensitive information, which represents considerable value and must be reliably protected.

With the average ransom payment in 2021 exceeding $800K, law firms should use the best security practices to protect their clients’ information. Keep reading to learn more about cybersecurity for law firms and how legal professionals can protect their data.

Develop Cybersecurity Awareness

According to numerous studies, the human factor remains the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. For example, the report by U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for the year 2021 indicated that 90% of breaches start with a phishing email. Clicking on any links received in such emails, disguised as messages from colleagues, clients or vendors, can lead to severe consequences, including data theft, losing control of your account or compromising the whole system.

A cybersecurity training aimed at developing security awareness among legal professionals would address 90% of cases of potential cyberattacks providing maximum ROI on your cybersecurity efforts. That is even better than following the famous 80/20 Pareto principle, so developing security awareness should be on the priority list for any law firm taking cybersecurity seriously.

Use Strong Passwords

The annual study by Verizon, often cited by cybersecurity experts, demonstrates that over 80% of breaches can be attributed to stolen credentials. Meanwhile, the easiest way to steal someone’s password is still guessing it. Surprisingly, passwords like ‘123456’ remain the most popular among CEOs even in 2022.

It takes seconds or minutes to guess someone’s password created from words found in dictionaries or combinations using someone’s personal information, like the name or the date of birth. Reused passwords used on multiple accounts are another big no-no since hackers would try a password they succeeded in cracking on all your accounts.

It is best to use a long unique password for each account, including not less than 8 characters, uppercase and lowercase symbols, numbers and special characters, or even use stronger passwords made by password generators.

Use Multi-Factor Authentication

Using two-factor or multi-factor authentication adds another layer of security to your login and password protection. In fact, multi-factor authentication can block over 99.9% of account compromise attacks, as claimed in the study by Microsoft.

When you add multi-factor authentication, you need to enter a special code sent by SMS to your phone. Using Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator instead of your phone can make the security even stronger, protecting your account from hacks using cloned phone numbers.

Don’t Send Sensitive Data by Email

Law firms concerned about cybersecurity should not rely on email for exchanging files and sensitive data. Although compliant email service providers like Microsoft encrypt all messages, the practice of sending files by email still creates numerous vulnerabilities and risks of data leaks.

When someone sends information by email, they lose control over the data after the email is sent, as the recipient can forward the message to anyone. There is always a risk of sending the email to someone not intended or not-authorized to receive it. Finally, when documents are sent by email, they could be hacked if the email account is compromised.

Leverage Legal Technology

Those law firms who consider bringing their cybersecurity and data management to yet another level are advised to use legal technology and bring all their data to a secure platform.

Legal case management software like Rolling Legal presents lawyers with secure cloud capabilities to keep all their data, assign user access rights, share information with team members and clients without sending files by email, and much more.

Contact Rolling Legal for More Information

Lawyers who migrate from spreadsheets and run their CRM, case management and document management in Rolling Legal can benefit in multiple ways, including creating secure and compliant storage of their data, decreasing the chances of phishing attacks and other cyber fraud.

For more information on how legal technology can boost your law firm’s cybersecurity and revolutionize your data management, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Rolling Legal team for a free demo and consultation.