Ride the Lightning

Law Firm Cohen Milstein Suffered Cyber Incident in January 2021

May 27, 2021

Reuters reported on May 24 that Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, a plaintiff-side complex litigation firm, experienced unauthorized access to its computer systems in January, according to a notice on its website. The firm said it investigated the incident and is not aware of any misuse of information.

The firm said that it “discovered unusual activity on certain computer systems” on January 23, potentially risking the security of some data. A Cohen Milstein representative said that a “small subset” of the firm’s servers and cases may have been affected.

“An exhaustive review of the data was conducted and concluded that only a small subset of Cohen Milstein’s servers and cases were potentially impacted and there is no evidence that any of the potentially impacted data was misused or that there was any attempt to misuse it,” the representative said in an email statement.

The 100-lawyer firm is the latest law firm to suffer a data security incident. In the past year, firms including Jones Day, Goodwin Procter, Seyfarth Shaw and Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy have acknowledged that they were impacted by cybersecurity incidents.

Cohen Milstein, which handles large-scale class action litigation for plaintiffs across the country, has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Raleigh and Palm Beach Gardens.

When Cohen Milstein discovered the suspicious activity, it disconnected the affected systems from the network and began an investigation, which found that its systems “were subject to unauthorized access by someone not connected with Cohen Milstein” on that day, according to a notice posted on the firm’s website.

The firm said it is notifying anyone who had personally identifying or personal health information on the systems “out of an abundance of caution,” reviewing and beefing up its policies and procedures and notifying regulators.

And the hits just keep on coming . . .

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email:  Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
https://twitter.com/sharonnelsonesq
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondnelson
https://amazon.com/author/sharonnelson