Offering clients the ultimate peace of mind – a new approach to security and remediation for legal firms

Next-generation technology breeds next-generation challenges

Whilst all reputable firms now have several layers of data protection in place, the landscape has been drastically complicated by the ongoing movement of critical assets into SaaS platforms, which has created a number of new attack vectors that firms are often unaware of until disaster strikes. As recently as November and December of 2023, high-profile legal firms were forced to publicly admit that they had fallen victim to ransomware attacks, and that their clients' data was in the hands of cybercriminals.

The consequences of such attacks can be devastating for legal firms, not only in terms of the disruption to their work, their clients, and the potential for huge fines if they are found to have breached data protection regulations, but also in terms of the ongoing reputational damage. By their very nature, firms handle some of their clients' most sensitive data, which means they must be able to demonstrate that it will remain secure throughout the duration of the working relationship and handled in full compliance with all applicable regulations. Being able to demonstrate the recoverability of said data is also imperative for cyber insurance compliance.

Unfortunately, ransomware also continues to evolve at an unprecedented rate, as bad actors look to exploit new attack vectors at 'zero day' – as soon as they appear – and devise ever more insidious strategies to overcome the increasing sophistication of cyber security ecosystems, particularly by exploiting simple human error, which sadly remains the leading cause of data breaches.

A multifaceted approach to ransomware protection, tailored to firms' unique security and compliance requirements, is clearly required, which requires legal IT leaders to "plan to fail, rather than fail to plan" – remediation is as essential as protection.

Establishing a new standard of resilience for legal data

This new model must encompass all aspects of firms' IT infrastructure, from an intelligent approach to Cloud transformation, the software-defined model for networking, and the use of immutable backup technology for all critical data – all of which must be supported by ongoing cyber security awareness training for staff at all levels, ensuring they are aware of their individual responsibilities. Cyber security ecosystems must be optimised to minimise potential attack vectors, patch vulnerabilities as soon as they are identified, and ensure best practice is followed across the entire firm.

However, as we touched on earlier, protection (while still very much essential) is no longer enough. As we have mentioned, planning to fail is failing to plan, and so a robust data protection strategy must also factor in the need for effective remediation and disaster recovery. Indeed, this is increasingly required as part of firms' ever more stringent insurance requirements. Systems and processes must be established to ensure critical data can be restored and secured as quickly as possible – ideally in days, not months – should a breach occur. This will not only ensure any operational disruption (not to mention the potentially fatal financial and reputational damage) can be minimised, but also ensure clients' data can be secured without giving in to the ransom demand. To this end, Exponential-e have developed a focused portfolio to maximise the resiliency of the UK's legal firms, centred around our ownRansomware Defender solution, as well as providing protection of data within SaaS DMS.