Brisbane law firm cyber attack – what you can learn to protect your business and your clients

Posted on: November 6th, 2019 onPlatinum

Each year, the number of Brisbane law firms falling victim to cyber attack rises. Law firms are prime targets for attacks due to the abundance of confidential and sensitive information they hold. Your firm can learn ways to protect your business and your clients by understanding the threats they could face and ways to mitigate any risks.

Threats Facing Law Firms

• Ransomware – the cyber attacker seizes control of your Brisbane law firms systems or important files until you pay a ransom to get the information back.
• Phishing – cyber criminals pose as another trustworthy person, often senior employees, to obtain sensitive information such as bank details or login information.
• Password attack – hacker cracks your password and gains access to your account/s.
• Data theft – attacks gain access to your confidential data and sell it online.
• Man-in-the-middle attack – without being detected, the hacker will gain access and alter communication between two parties.

Ways to protect your business and your clients

There are a number of ways to protect your Brisbane law firm from cyber attacks, including:

• Implement a cyber security program to comply with ethical and legal obligations – you need to address people, policies, procedures and technology.
• Continually educate and train employees on the best practices and procedures, and ways to identify potential attacks – experts consider employees to be the weakest link with many breaches involving unintentional human error. Teach employees about falling for phishing emails, ways to handle customer data, sending information via email, and password management.
• Limit the use of public WiFi networks when working remotely.
• Enable two-factor authentication as an additional safeguard against weak passwords.
• Backup data regularly.
• Implement an immediate response plan if your law firm unfortunately falls victim to a cyber attack.

Cyber security isn’t easy but needs to be a top priority for Brisbane law firms to protect the future of their business and client confidentiality against cyber attack.