Clients trust your law firm with their sensitive data. You’ve done everything you can to protect your practice from data theft, but you could still be exposed. Cybersecurity experts agree your employees are your biggest security threat. If attorneys and staff aren’t trained in good security practices, hackers can still find points of vulnerability, no matter how secure your infrastructure.
Discuss the following tips with your employees to ensure that they do their part in keeping your law firm’s data safe.
Secure Passwords
Strong passwords are one of the most important lines of defense against cyberattacks. If hackers crack a worker’s password, it’s easier for their attack to escape detection. They’ll log in with your employee’s credentials, often without anyone’s knowledge until it’s too late.
Ensure that your employees are using long and unique passwords. They should be more than 9 characters, and include a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters. Read our guide for creating a secure password.
Phishing Scams
“Phishing” occurs when someone with malicious intent poses as a legitimate company in order to obtain your sensitive data. “Spear phishing” can be even more convincing: it gathers information about you before sending a malicious email, so it can be tailored to make you more likely to believe it.
Phishing attacks are often tricky to distinguish from legitimate emails because they are very similar. Many phishing emails sent to companies appear to be from common services such as eFax, Facebook, banks, and more.
In order to avoid dangerous viruses and data breaches, educate your employees on what a phishing scam is. Make sure they know not to give out any personal or company information to anyone without checking with superiors first. They should also never download and open a file from an unknown sender.
Back Up Your Law Firm’s Data
Sometimes, no matter your best efforts, accidents and data breaches do happen. To protect your firm in these situations, ensure your data is backed up regularly. When data is “backed up,” it is saved at a specific point in time to be accessed later.
Having a backup plan will prevent you from losing all your data in the case of a breach or virus. For information on how to set up a firm wide backup system, click here.
Secure Case Management Software
Legal case management software can help employees make safe cybersecurity choices effortlessly. A case management solution like CASEpeer has security features built into it, so your employees can put their knowledge of cybersecurity into practice. CASEpeer requires secure passwords, automatically backs up data, and is hosted in the secure Amazon cloud. Coupled with safe security practices by employees, effective case management software is one of the safest ways to store your law firm’s data.
A law firm’s data is only as safe as its employees are careful. Educating your attorneys and staff on safe cybersecurity practices is the single most important thing you can do to protect your law firm’s sensitive data from corruption. Everyone in your firm is responsible for ensuring the safety of your clients’ data.
CASEpeer is secure case management software designed for personal injury attorneys. From intake to settlement, our robust features help law firms become more proactive and powerful. Our goal is to help your law firm grow. For more security and practice management tips, visit our blog.