Cybersecurity

At law firms and legal departments, preparing for the new year should mean looking back at the last year and prioritizing revenue-driving activities, identifying strategies to grow your firm or company while mitigating risk and budgeting for new projects to meet client demands.

In the event that your company is the victim of a ransomware attack, this article provides steps to be taken as part of its response to such an incident. It is meant to be a helpful guide, but the best response generally will depend on different factors, including the scope and severity of the attack, availability of remediation measures, and business sensitivities.

Some key takeaways and hot topics that should be on the radar of lawyers from the Legal Marketing Association's Legal Marketing Technology Conference in Chicago.

In the First Enforcement Action Initiated By Its New “Cyber Unit,” the SEC Announced It Has Secured a Court Order to Freeze the Assets of Individuals Behind a “Scam” Initial Coin Offering

In the first enforcement action initiated by its new “Cyber Unit,” the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently announced it has secured a court order to freeze the assets of individuals behind a “scam” initial coin offering, or ICO. 

Although the current news cycle is a barrage of negative situations, the silver lining is that they offer law firms a wealth of teachable moments about the importance of preparing for and responding to a crisis situation.

In September 2015, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned that the next "push of the envelope" in cybersecurity might be attacks that change or manipulate electronic information in order to compromise its accuracy or reliability. Two years later, we may now be seeing the beginning of such insidious attacks, in the context of GPS spoofing — a technique that sends false signals to systems that use GPS signals for navigation.

Part One of a Two-Part Article

As we head into 2018, cryptocurrency and blockchain will continue to be a top initiative for pioneers in the financial services industry. As with any innovation within the financial services industry, the regulators are never far behind and are doing their best to keep up. Those that enter this space will find that they also have to pioneer the controls to manage the regulatory risks this technology presents.

Many corporations around the globe are preparing for May 2018, when Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcement kicks in. The regulation encompasses a wide range of nuanced privacy requirements that can be challenging to operationalize. In particular, requirements around the rights of European data subjects — which include the right to be forgotten and rights to access, rectification and objection to processing — will be some of the most difficult to address.