Organizations are creating, using, storing, and sharing more legal documents and data than ever before. In fact, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced every day. However, since the start of Covid-19, 2/3 of organizations experienced a 25% increase in cyberthreats. And in Q2 2022, about 52 million data breaches were reported. The rise in attacks can be attributed to lack of protocols, uneducated employees, and vulnerable data. Essentially, your organization may not be as protected from cyber attacks as you might think, and when you are dealing with legal documents and data, there could be a lot at stake.
As the volume of data increases, cybercriminals will continue to try to gain access to your business’ financial details, customer information, and other sensitive proprietary data. Thus, organizations must ensure their systems are secure, fully functioning, and accessible only to the internal and external stakeholders who need the information to do their jobs.
Read ahead to learn how implementing a solid cybersecurity plan and leveraging cloud-based technology can keep your organization safe from cyber disaster.
Why You Need A Cybersecurity Strategy
Cyberattacks create costly and substantial legal and financial risks for companies. But the costs go beyond financial as well. Cybersecurity threats can be damaging to your organization’s reputation, business functions and execution, company relations, employee morale, and more.
A solid strategy will help your business protect sensitive information and be prepared in case of a cyberattack. Here are three reasons why you’ll want to create a cybersecurity strategy (and sooner, rather than later!):
Prevent Loss of Revenue
The average cost of data breaches increased 2.6% from $4.24 million in 2021 to $4.35 million in 2022. Lost business represents the largest costs associated with breaches, at an average total cost of $1.6 million. These costs include customer turnover, lost revenue due to system downtime, and the expense of acquiring new business due to diminished reputation. Additionally, costs could include fines from regulatory agencies, compensation and settlements to victims, legal fees, investment in new security technologies, and investment in cybersecurity training for employees.
Prevent Loss of Data
Data loss can have serious implications for your organization. Losing documents and information requires significant time investments to restore or recover data that is essential to the business. Unfortunately, 94% of companies that experience severe data loss never recover; another 51% of companies close within two years of the data loss.
Protect Your Reputation
According to a Forbes report, 46% of organizations suffered reputational damage as a result of a data breach. Once a firm’s image has been tarnished, the reputation is difficult to restore. About 3/4 of US consumers say they would stop working with companies with a high record of data breaches.
How to Protect Your Legal Documents and Data from Cyber Attacks
Your organization manages and stores highly classified and sensitive client and internal data. Thus, you should prioritize security to protect that information from data breaches and avoid cyberattacks. Your organization should follow these steps as a starting point for creating a data security action plan.
- Establish policies and procedures. Develop a plan for preventing and mitigating risk. Who do you need to alert about new policies, as well as in the case of an incident? What steps are needed to resolve the issue? Which processes need to be updated? What external communications are necessary? Questions such as these should be answered so that you can quickly respond if an attack happens.
- Leverage new tools and technology. Transition any data management completed on local computers to a cloud-based platform with modern security measures in place.
- Use a Single-Sign-On (SSO) solution. Mitigate weak passwords and password recycling to ensure information is not accessible by outsiders.
- Educate and train your teams. Ensure employees understand what constitutes a cyber threat or attack, how to proactively identify these issues, and how to effectively assess these risks. Can they recognize signs of social engineering? Do they know how to prevent attacks? Do they know who to report any issues or concerns to? Cybersecurity predators often identify employees as “easy prey”, but educated employees can readily identify attacks and avoid falling into the trap.
EntityKeeper: A Secure Legal Entity Solution
EntityKeeper is a cloud-based solution, meaning all of your sensitive documents and data are conveniently stored in one secure location. The EntityKeeper platform uses single sign-on (SSO) capabilities to securely authenticate login with one set of credentials. SSO enables you to monitor which apps employees are using, protect important information with secure login credentials, and access your account with added convenience and ease.
One EntityKeeper client, Banner Health, uses the platform’s secure access feature to assign specified team members access to important information across the company. With this feature, team members no longer need to risk sending critical information via unprotected spreadsheets. Instead, the team uses its secure, centralized storage system to share and protect legal documents and data.
