Ride the Lightning

Law Firms: The Cloud is Safer But Not Necessarily Cheaper

July 26, 2017

As InfoWorld noted in a post, the WannaCry ransomware and the NotPetya worm remind us of why the cloud is a safer place for businesses to do their computing.

John and I were cloud curmudgeons originally, not liking the idea of entrusting a third party with law firm data. But our friend Jim Calloway finally persuaded us that for many law firms, the cloud would protect law firm data better the law firms would.

Using the public cloud makes you less likely to get attacked and breached. The layers of security in the cloud are more than a deterrent for most attacks. The cloud providers proactively monitor these clouds, and they quickly spot and quickly block attacks. And they automatically apply operating system, application, and service patches and fixes.

No major cloud provider has been a victim of all the malware attacks of the last few years. That's a powerful argument for the cloud.

And indeed, we are seeing more and more law firms take their computing to the cloud. What sometimes mystifies us is their absolute belief that the cloud will be cheaper. That has not been our experience. The cloud isn't cheap – and you cannot dispense with issuing lawyers laptops. Our own math tends to show the cloud as being more expensive over the long run.

Is that a reason not to move to the cloud? Not at all – but don't think you're saving money in the process. Reducing risk is a strong argument for spending the extra money. Just make sure you do your due diligence. ISO created a new standard called ISO 19086 several months ago which establishes a framework for cloud service level agreements (SLAs). There are a lot of online resources about what questions to ask cloud providers – gather as many as you can in order to evaluate the security of your data!

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