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Sensei Officers Pen Article for ABA Journal

October 2, 2017

Recently, Sensei’s Sharon Nelson, John Simek, and Michael Maschke wrote “Practical cybersecurity for law firms: How to batten down the hatches” for the ABA Journal. The ABA Journal is read by half of the nation’s 1 million lawyers every month. It covers the trends, people and finances of the legal profession from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. This article appears in the October 2017 edition.

Excerpt: We’re quickly approaching 2018, and a week doesn’t go by without another variant of malware causing havoc across the globe. First it was the WannaCry ransomware worm, which infected more than 230,000 computer systems in over 150 countries, demanding ransom payments in exchange for the decryption of files. More recently, a new variant using code from the Petya ransomware (named “NotPetya”) struck first in Ukraine, followed by other European countries, and disabled critical utility services, such as the radiation monitoring system at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, as well as affecting the countries’ banks and commuter systems.

What caught the attention of lawyers was an apparent infection in one of DLA Piper’s European offices that brought the law firm’s normal operations to a halt. As we write, the extent of the damage is still unclear.

Times have changed since CryptoLocker first ran wild in 2013, but the results are still as devastating. The costs of ransoms have significantly gone up from a few hundred dollars to the $1,000-plus range for the decryption key to unlock the affected files—and more than half of those who pay up do not receive the decryption key. So much for honor among thieves!