Features

What’s Behind Your Firewall? Know Your Cyber Risks

Cyberattacks are inevitable. Setting up effective preventive measures need not be either prohibitively expensive or time consuming, even for lawyers practicing on their own or in small firms, if you know the basics concerning ethical responsibilities and the most common types of attacks.

By Sharon D. Nelson & John W. Simek

Let’s Be Reasonable: The Ethics of Cybersecurity

Several Rules of Professional Responsibility are implicated by a lawyer’s use of technology. The authors summarize the rules and discuss lawyers’ requirement to provide “reasonable” efforts to protect client information from unauthorized or inadvertent disclosure.

By Aviva Meridian Kaiser & Tison H. Rhine

7 Ways to Protect Your Data

Here’s a checklist of reasonable ways lawyers can increase their cybersecurity and reduce their vulnerability to both external and internal threats.

By Tison H. Rhine & Aviva Meridian Kaiser

Opinions, Voices & Ideas

Editor's Note
Cybersecurity: What’s Behind Your Firewall?
Editorial board member Douglas Frazer says this special focus issue gives you the information and tools to prevent, detect, and respond to a data breach.

President's Message
Be Ready to Speak Up: Judicial Elections and Selections
Fran Deisinger urges lawyers to remind citizens of the critical difference between electing partisan politicians and selecting impartial judges.

Your State Bar
Stay Safe With a Little Help from the State Bar
George Brown invites you to use State Bar resources to protect your client and law firm information.

101
Encryption: Easy and Inexpensive Document Security
Jeff Krause discusses why encryption matters to lawyers and provides info on email encryption tools that are readily available, affordable, and easy to use.

10 Questions
Jennifer Rathburn: Building a Niche Data Security Practice
Jen Rathburn’s practice in health care law now focuses on data management, data breach and privacy, and security issues to help business clients.

Ethics
To Email or Not to Email: What Are the Issues?
Email communication is convenient, Dean Dietrich says, but it carries ethical risks for lawyers who send messages too casually.

Technology
Prepare for Battle: Use This Cybersecurity Framework
Bill Brousseau provides this adaptable framework as a simple-to-follow approach to security practices for law firms.

Managing Risk
Give TLC to Clients: Respond ASAP to Security Breaches
Tom Watson says planning what you’ll do if cyber criminals attack your firm will also reduce the likelihood of being hacked in the first place.

On Balance
Resilience Requires Recharging: 6 Ways to Power Up When You’re Crazy Busy
Paula Davis-Laack says don’t wait until your batteries die to try some of these healthy ways to restore your mental and physical energy.

Final Thought
Open Ses@ame! (or Fluffy Gets It With a Toyota)
We all understand the need to secure data, but Kevin Palmersheim laments a poor memory when it comes to passwords.