Articles

Excerpt:
Setting the stage
The title of this article was also the tile of a session presented at ABA TECHSHOW this year. And each part of the title is true. It is absolutely necessary to have cyberinsurance in order to manage your risk. No amount of technology, policies or training can guarantee that you will not be breached. Expensive? Oh yes. Get ready for sticker shock when you purchase cyberinsurance. Because we teach CLEs on cyberinsurance, we can tell you with some assurance that lawyers are very confused about what specific insurance they need. Insurance companies are not very helpful– the various policies offered across the industry are not at all standardized – and of course they are written in complicated language which often obfuscates their meaning.

Where are we today?
Not in a great place. According to a 2017 survey by the data analytics firm FICO, half of U.S. business have no cyberinsurance, 27% have no plans to buy coverage and only 16% report having a policy that covers all cyber risks. There is a certain justified cynicism about cyberinsurance. The news is rife with companies who had cyberinsurance, but found – after being breached – that a substantial portion of their damages were not covered.

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Excerpt: We have said for many years that the cloud will generally protect a law firm’s data better than the law firm would itself. As more and more law firms adopt Microsoft Office 365, thereby moving to the cloud, we have come to the conclusion that a few words of caution are in order when law firms entrust their data to the cloud.

With huge volumes of law firm confidential data (and data from other verticals) moving to the cloud, it is no wonder that the bad guys are taking aim at the clouds. And there seems to be a shift afoot, in which the main responsibility for protecting corporate data in the cloud belongs to the cloud customer rather than the cloud provider.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recently issued the latest version of its Treacherous 12 Top Threats to Cloud Computing Plus: Industry Insights report.

While there are many security concerns in the cloud, CSA’s list focuses on 12 concerns specifically related to the shared, on-demand nature of cloud computing. CSA conducted a survey of industry experts to gather professional opinions on the greatest security issues involving cloud computing. In order of severity, here are the 12 risks.

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Excerpt: Traveling abroad? Worried about pickpockets? We have far bigger worries these days. If you travel abroad, you also have to worry about foreign governments – and our own – which may be interested in our data. Lawyers are not only not exempt from that interest – they are magnets. And when The New York Times published an article early this year about safeguarding data when crossing the border, we knew we were seeing a new hot cybersecurity topic – one that has primarily been considered at very large firms, until all the recent stories caught fire in the news. This article will focus on the dangers presented by our own government (the current runaway headline), but the advice is generally applicable to the risks presented by foreign governments, risks which may increase as there seems to be a worldwide ratcheting up of device seizure and examination at borders.

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Excerpt: There are very few lawyers who seem to have control over their digital devices. To the contrary, the devices themselves seem to be in control, demanding the nearly non-stop attention of lawyers. It might seem odd to hear two geeks talk about digital detoxing, but we recognized the need for it years ago. Perhaps, as geeks, we were on the bleeding edge of this phenomenon.

Author Nelson was not pleased that author Simek could not have dinner in a nice restaurant with his wife without regularly checking his phone. That was the beginning. In time, marital negotiations (and renegotiations) resulted in some rules! Our phones may be in our pockets but they are not invited to participate in nice dinners. Our phones, unless an emergency is in progress, are not checked after dinner. And our phones charge in the family room – they are not permitted in the bedroom. The majority of lawyers do have their phones charging in their bedroom on their bedside tables – or, worse yet, in their beds.

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Excerpt: Ransomware is growing by leaps and bounds. There are reports that ransomware attacks have increased by 748% over the last year. A major international study found that almost forty percent of businesses were hit by ransomware last year. Those are some staggering numbers. Law firms are not immune to ransomware attacks either. Any business is at risk, including the solo attorney. What can we do about ransomware attacks?

In order to understand how to deal with a ransomware attack, we need to understand what ransomware is, how it is contracted, and what impact there may be on your law practice.

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Excerpt: As we travel around the Commonwealth lecturing to lawyers on technology and security topics,
we’ve met a lot of lawyers worrying about the future of their practices. Some are resigned. It is
not uncommon to hear “I just want to hang on for a couple more years. Then I’ll retire.” The
younger lawyers don’t have that option. They are inclined to ask, “What can I do? How will I
survive?”

VSB Executive Director Karen Gould wrote a column in the last issue of Virginia Lawyer in which
she laid out all of the competition today’s lawyer faces, from LegalZoom, Avvo and a host of
alternative legal services providers. We are sure some of you found it dismal reading.

But take heart, there are ways to compete – and not only to survive, but thrive.

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Excerpt: For more than 20 years, the authors have been providing IT services to law firms. Ah the good
old days, when life was simpler. Here’s how IT once worked. We would get hired, generally to
install and configure computers, servers, etc. Once our initial work was done, do you know
what we would do? We would wait for the phone to ring. Perhaps something wasn’t working or
perhaps the client needed training. Now and again, they would get upgraded hardware or
software. Most clients would have us do updates on a regular basis – in those more primitive
times, perhaps monthly. Most IT work was called “break/fix” – if something didn’t work, we
fixed it. And there were of course occasional projects . . .

Fast forward to today, when almost all businesses, including law firms and other legal entities,
are turning to managed service providers.

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Excerpt: Several years ago, a Canadian attorney and good friend of ours, invested $10,000 in bitcoin.
Clearly, he is a lot smarter than us. We can’t even imagine the extent of his profit – several days
before we started to write this article, bitcoin hit an all-time high of $4,991.66 on September 2,
2017. It is down slightly as we write, but our friend certainly hit a jackpot.

We become aware of bitcoin wallets a few years ago, as husbands (mostly) began to hide assets
from their soon-to- be ex-wives in those wallets. And then came a barrage of ransomware
attacks. Law firm after law firm was paying the ransom ($300-$500 in the early days and $1500-
$3000 today). The cybercriminals usually want the ransom in bitcoin. To our amazement, there
are now bitcoin ATMs available in local gas stations and laundromats complete with posted
instructions on creating a bitcoin wallet for the Bitcoin novice.

In July, there were reports of a Citrix UK study which found that a third of UK companies were
stockpiling digital currency, mostly in bitcoins, to pay the ransom (an average of approximately
$176,000) if they became victims of a ransomware attack.

At the 2017 ILTACON conference, artificial intelligence wasn’t quite kicked to the curb, but the
buzz around blockchain became very loud indeed. In the last several months, it has become
increasingly clear that blockchain is a transformative technology that is going to make
substantial changes in the practice of law.

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Excerpt: With so many recent disasters and perhaps more ahead, the ABA Law Practice Division advises you to do some planning NOW.

Have a Disaster Recovery Plan which you review annually. Define who is responsible for what. It should be electronic and in the cloud as well as in paper. Several trusted members of the firm should also keep a paper copy at home.

Communications are always the #1 problem. An emergency contact list should be in paper and in the cloud where it can be accessed via a computer or a phone.

In case of flooding or mass destruction, it is best to have a backup in the cloud. Test your backup regularly to make sure it is working. There are many reputable cloud providers – examples include Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze, CrashPlan SMB and Acronis.

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