Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Safeguarding Your Intellectual Property

Matthew Calcagno

The documents that a firm produces are its greatest asset, yet firms historically have not made sufficient efforts to safeguard those documents from both internal and external threats. Law firms have typically had an open-door approach to document access. This means that anyone in your firm can likely access any document at any time, leaving your firm’s intellectual property entirely unprotected.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

What Is the Appropriate Statute of Limitations Period for BIPA Claims?

Sean Wieber, Patrick O’Meara and Eric Shinabarger

The BIPA compliance lag has led companies using or collecting biometric information to consider how far back their liability may extend. The Illinois General Assembly, however, did not include an explicit statute of limitations period in BIPA. As a result, the statute of limitations has become one of BIPA’s primary battlegrounds as litigants argue about potential class sizes and damages awards.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

The California Consumer Privacy Act: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask — 100 Days Out

Alan L. Friel

Part Two of a Two-Part Article

Part One of this article, last issue, covered how the CCPA applies to businesses — both in and outside California, the revenue threshold, proposed amendments and other open issues. Part Two continues with the rights that CCPA grants to Californians, the CCPA’s impact on company privacy policies, how other states’ privacy laws compare to the CCPA, exceptions and penalties for violating the Act.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

As Hackers Get Smarter, Can Law Firms Keep Up?

Christine Simmons and Xiumei Dong

“It’s Not the Hardware You Worry About, It’s the Mistake That Someone Makes That Inadvertently Gives a Bad Actor Access.”

The legal industry has poured significant resources into cybersecurity, leading to huge leaps in progress in the last decade. But there are areas where large and small law firms can do much better in preventing and reacting to data breaches, and the legal sector may risk falling behind other industries. That’s partly because hackers are learning how to circumvent law firm security systems, leading to a continuous game of cat and mouse.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

New Study Shows Which States Lead in Privacy Protection Laws

Sue Reisinger

General counsel who navigate the mishmash of state privacy laws may relate to a new study showing that individual U.S. states’ privacy statutes are spread across a broad spectrum.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: Crisis Control: Best Practices for Emergency E-Discovery and Incident Response

Andrew Johnston

A set of steps and best practices that legal teams can follow to ensure thorough and efficient handling of e-discovery in crisis situations.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: A Closer Look At 3 Summer Cases Concerning Lost Data

Mike Hamilton

Summer 2019 put some interesting case law into the books. We’ll take a look at three cases having to do with lost data and whether spoliation sanctions were levied.

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Entertainment Law & Finance

Security Worries for Online Video Game Companies

Victoria Hudgins

Fortnite video game developer Epic Games Inc. isn’t just dodging digital adversaries — now it’s been slammed with a class action lawsuit over a data breach.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

The California Consumer Privacy Act: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask — 100 Days Out

Alan L. Friel

Part One of a Two-Part Article

Responses to questions businesses frequently ask about the impacts of the CCPA. Implementation challenges inevitably will arise as a company works to apply these new requirements to its business practices. The time is now to start preparing for the CCPA, as well as for other new U.S. privacy laws that are likely to follow.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Increasing Client Requirements: Securing Law Firms for the 21st Century

Debra Gray

Gone are the days of “basic security.” What used to be optional is now standard: two factor authentication, complex passwords, clean desk policies, data encryption at rest and in transit, mobile device management and up-to-the-minute patching. Clients expect these items to already be in place and are further expanding their expectations.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Cybersecurity False Claims Act Cases: The Next Frontier

Andrew Mohr and C. Kelly Kroll

A new wave of False Claims Act cases is crashing ashore. Based on the federal government’s inclusion of toughened cybersecurity requirements for government contractors, numerous FCA cases will undoubtedly be filed and litigated in coming years against prime contractors and their major subcontractors for allegedly failing to comply with their contractual cybersecurity obligations.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Why Data Competency Is a Requisite for Tomorrow’s Practitioners

Josh Becker

Whether they like it or not, lawyers interact with data every day. While there is no need for them to seek advanced degrees in data science or statistics, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to provide adequate representation without being skilled in the uses of data.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Data Privacy Reviews: The Cornerstone of a Data Breach Response

Andrew Goodman

Including a managed document review vendor in your incident response plan is critical.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Marriott Moves to Dismiss Data Breach Lawsuit, Says Passport Numbers Useless to Hackers

Amanda Bronstad

In Its Motion To Dismiss, Marriott Insisted the Breach Caused No Harm to Its Guests and Attached a Declaration By a Former Government Official Who Wrote: “A U.S. Passport Is Virtually Impossible to Forge Successfully.”

Marriott is insisting that last year’s cyberattack did no harm to its hotel guests, not least of which because hackers cannot use stolen passport numbers.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: New Cases Provide Insights on the FRCP 37(e) ‘Reasonable Steps to Preserve’ Requirement

Philip Favro

The Franklin and Culhane Cases Demonstrate the Importance of Both Implementing and Then Following Corporate Litigation Readiness Measures for Purposes of FRCP 37(E)

An evaluation of FRCP 37(e) necessarily entails examining key motion practice flash points that have arisen since the implementation of the rule. One of the most significant of these flash points is what constitutes “reasonable steps to preserve” relevant ESI.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: Demystifying Social Media Discovery

Todd Heffner

Social Media Escapes an Easy Definition, But You Know It When You See It

While it would be helpful to understand the technical details of collecting data from various social media platforms, what’s more important is what parts of social media might be relevant to a dispute and what that means for both the requesting and producing parties.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Cybersecurity In the Legal Space: Is Your Organization Prepared?

Sundhar Rajan

Organizations that continue to be complacent about data security ignore the considerable risks posed by a breach: extended downtime, loss of billable hours, destruction or loss of sensitive data and work product, and the potentially catastrophic costs associated with repairing the damage — both to their technology infrastructure and to their reputation and brand.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

GDPR & CCPA Are Just the Beginning

Karen A. Schuler

How Middle Market Companies Can Shore Up Their Data Privacy

The most significant overhaul to the EU’s data privacy policies in over 20 years, with extraterritorial reach, forced American businesses to remediate, and in some cases, overhaul their data privacy governance programs. But the GPDR was just the beginning. Organizations seeking compliance with the growing number of data privacy regulations will need to remain vigilant, especially for organizations that rely heavily on personal data.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

The State of the U.S. Privacy Job Market, 2019: Part Two

Jared Coseglia

A Reflection on the Year Behind, the Years Ahead, and Why Privacy Means So Much to Us

Part Two of a Two-Part Article

Part two of The State of the U.S. Privacy Job Market, 2019 will outline what is happening within service providers, consultancies, and vendors will touch briefly on government agencies and will predict the near-future state of the U.S. privacy job market.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: Summer 2019 E-Discovery Case Law Review

Mike Hamilton

A review of recent cases involving e-discovery.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: Litigation Support, E-discovery and the Recovery of Costs

Nathan Curtis

The Data Explosion vs. Recovery Model Stagnation

For law firms, the pace of exponential growth of data is a substantial problem — mainly due to the fact that the law firm business model of processing, hosting and storing this avalanche of client data, however, has not evolved as quickly as the data itself.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: What GCs Want from Legal Technology

Gina Passarella Cipriani and Zach Warren

Legal Tech Companies Have to Get Out of Their Own Way In Vying for Law Department Adoption

The legal technology industry has some significant hurdles to overcome in its increased push to sell into legal departments, general counsel say, admitting they themselves are part of the problem.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

It’s Time to Take Third-Party Risk Seriously

Mark Sangster

The use of new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile and cloud by vendors add to the question: Where is my data, and how can I protect it when it is in someone else’s hands? In the hustle and bustle of daily business, third parties often become the overlooked or unwitting accomplice in criminal activities.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

The State of the U.S. Privacy Job Market, 2019

A Reflection on the Year Behind, the Years Ahead and Why Privacy Means So Much to Us

Part One of a Two-Part Article

In just over a year since GDPR Day, privacy by design has made privacy as a profession one of the fastest growing and hottest verticals in and outside of the legal job market.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legislative Heat Wave: A Mid-Year Review of Upcoming Cybersecurity Laws and Enforcement Activity

Michael Bahar, Sarah Paul, Mary Jane Wilson-Bilik and Ali Jessani

While legislation to enhance data privacy rights and obligations continue to make headlines, regulators and legislators are also stepping up their cybersecurity expectations. In the first half of 2019, a number of states have updated their existing data breach notification laws and passed new cybersecurity requirements.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

How to Keep Mobile Data Safe: The Case for On-Device AI

Gevorg Karapetyan

Bring Your Own Device is one of the biggest compliance-related issues companies face today, and when it comes to security risks, law firms are prime targets. Considering law firms are built on their reputation, firms must make every assurance that the technology they use will protect their data.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Cybersecurity Spending on the Rise in 2019

Debra Frank Montero

As data security challenges continue to escalate, many law firms and corporate legal departments are upping their efforts to strengthen cyber defenses and minimize risks.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

SHIELD Act Signed in NY

F. Paul Greene

Defines Data Breach and Requires Data Security Controls

New York has brought itself into line with a number of states concerning how they define a data breach, and, where applicable, what substantive security controls they require.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Just Say No to Hackers

Frank Ready

Conference of Mayors Resolution Calls for Cities Not to Pay Ransomware

The underlying logic is pretty straightforward: if bad actors realize that there’s no longer any cash waiting for them at the end of the rainbow, they’ll eventually pack up their ball and go home.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

EU Court Rules Adding Facebook ‘Like’ Button Triggers GDPR Data Collection Obligation

Caroline Spiezio

Websites with embedded Facebook “like” buttons must inform users their data will be collected and processed by the social media giant, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: Smart Speakers and E-Discovery

Brian Schrader

For businesses that own such a device, or for individual employees who might have a personally owned one on their office desk, the question of who owns any recorded data remains murky.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

5 Quick and Easy Ways to Hack Your Business Development

Ari Kaplan

The most popular justification for avoiding business-development activities is a lack of time. There are, however, a number of strategies that will allow you to execute and produce results in minutes — or even seconds.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: How E-Discovery Trends Are Reshaping E-Discovery Teams

Nishad Shevde

E-discovery, as an industry, is once again at an inflection point. What are the big trends that are exerting pressure on e-discovery teams today — and more importantly, what will an effective e-discovery team look like in the coming years?

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Fourth Quarter Educational Events to Stay on Track

Nina Cunningham

A review of upcoming programs and events that bring together many of the most active professionals in the field and its various branches.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

When Key Employees Quit: 5 Things You Must Do to Keep Control of Critical Data

Michael Ciaramitaro and Sarah Brown

Losing a key employee is never easy — they often take with them institutional knowledge, great internal and external relationships, and critical skill sets. There is also a risk that they’ll take some information or data with them when they go, either inadvertently or on purpose.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Training Machines to Speak Legalese: The Perils and Promise of AI in Law

Serena Wellen

When AI is deployed appropriately with proper oversight, it helps us make connections we couldn’t see before, leading us to new legal and business insights. But teaching machines how to interpret “legalese” is nearly as challenging as the task it is trying to solve.

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Business Crimes Bulletin

Are Companies Playing It Too Safe With GDPR Breach Reporting?

Frank Ready

A new report from the law firm of Pinsent Masons shows that there has been a high level of GDPR "over-reporting" at the U.K.'s Information Commissioner's Office, but organizations who may think they are playing it safe may actually be opening themselves up to further regulatory scrutiny.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Electronic Signatures: Legal and Practical Considerations for E-Signing on the Virtual Dotted Line

Anthony J. Diana and David G. Krone

In assessing whether or how to employ e-signatures, particularly in higher risk transactions, organizations should be careful to manage the practical issues and potential legal complexities associated with e-signatures through careful assessment and a robust governance program.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Clients Drive Information Governance: Payment Tied to Guideline Compliance

Stephen Cole

To comply with the data side of the Outside Counsel Guidelines, firms must have a clear information governance strategy for which the firm’s use of technology systems is foundational.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Legal Tech: Spring 2019 E-Discovery Case Law Review

Mike Hamilton

The amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 2015 intended to clarify some of the ambiguities that caused inconsistent rulings in e-discovery matters. One such amendment was to Rule 37(e), which seemed to indicate that courts would not levee punitive sanctions without establishing “intent to deprive.” Despite this language, though, courts continue rely on their inherent authority to issue sanctions, meaning organizations must take their preservation obligations seriously.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Expanding Your Digital Strategy with RPA

Arup Das

Beyond improving efficiency, new advancements in Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, are helping lawyers do more billable work without hiring more people.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

2 U.S. Law Firms Among Cybercrime Victims

Patrick Smith

Because They Often Possess Valuable Information on a Variety of Companies and Individuals, Law Offices Continue to Be a Favorite Target for Hackers

The DOJ said that two U.S.-based law firms were among the victims of a “complex transnational organized cyber-crime network” that has been taken down.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

EU E-Commerce Proposal Aims to Eliminate Barriers; Calls for E-Signatures and Net Neutrality

Simon Taylor

The European Union has put forth an ambitious proposal for how countries can eliminate barriers to e-commerce and protect businesses and consumers engaged in online transactions. But parts of the proposal, published as part of a World Trade Organization initiative that includes the U.S. and China, are likely to face opposition.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Companies Poised To Repeat Data Privacy Compliance Mistakes

Phillip Bantz

New Study Shows U.S. Companies Are Taking the Same Failed Approach To Complying With California’s Privacy Regulation As They Did for GDPR

U.S. companies haven’t learned much from the missteps they made while preparing for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), suggests a new study on data privacy regulation compliance.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

State Report: New NJ Data Breach Notification Legislation Signed

Suzette Parmley

Legislation expanding the types of personal data that will trigger a required notification to customers in case of a breach, including email addresses and passwords, was signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

State Report: NY Creates Nation’s First Regulatory Cybersecurity Division

Dan M. Clark

New York’s financial regulatory agency has created a first-in-the-nation cybersecurity division to place special focus on protecting the state’s consumers and industries from digital threats.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Podcast: Cognitive Security

Jason Thomas

We live in information environment that is unique to this point in time (social media, information overload). How do we know what’s true and what’s not?

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

The Nice-to-Haves and Need-to-Haves of Cloud Computing

Michael Smith and Mike Paul

This article discusses what to look for in a cloud service provider and other issues that will help determine if moving to the cloud is the right move for your firm.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

IP Theft Goes Far Beyond the Huawei Scandal: How to Stay Safe

Ilia Sotnikov

IP theft is not limited to kingpins of business. Even if your organization has never appeared in the headlines, you cannot rest easy that no one is interested in acquiring your know-how. In fact, analysis the results of our survey for the 2018 Netwrix IT Risks Report reveals that small and medium organizations are actually more vulnerable to IP theft and cyber espionage than enterprises.

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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy

Data Security Ethics and Best Practices for Court Reporters

Andy Fredericks

The issue of digital security and privacy should be a paramount concern to modern court reporters just as it is to their attorney clients. Yet their biggest risk remains the same as everyone else’s: believing it won’t happen to them.

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