There are main offices and home offices, but a lawyer is typically always on the go to collect information for a case or visiting clients, partners, or consultants. When working offsite at locations like airports, hotels, coffee shops, and public locations, using the Internet for Cloud access means trusting the provider to protect and store sensitive data on their servers – a data breach waiting to happen. Hackers are already established in many public areas, awaiting to steal victims’ data, hold files hostage through encryption ransomware, or delete documents altogether. A 2022 Cost of Data Breach Study by Ponemon Institute LLC reported that 45% of breaches were cloud-based and the average total cost of a data breach was $4.35 million – a risk that should automatically be too costly to take.
Proper security protocols need to be in place by firms about using secure technology to protect their data when accessing or sharing information. According to the American Bar Association’s 2022 Cybersecurity Survey, 89% of respondents reported having one or more policies governing secure technology use. But this number can be deceiving as the report notes that only 67% have an email use policy, followed by 63% with a computer acceptable use policy, 60% for internet use, and 59% for remote access.
Information can be compromised and hacked through all the above avenues, so it is vital that firms not only ensure each policy is up to par, not falling for misleading “secure” language, but also expand and build a more robust, full-picture security standard to be applied across their organization. Security starts with people and their adoption of policies, so data security hygiene is extremely critical for legal firms and all their partners, subcontractors, experts, and others.
The solution is – a Cloud in your pocket that you control, carry with you without concern for loss or theft, and safely access to retrieve a needed file.
