Law firms face the daily task of protecting themselves and their clients from breaches of confidential data that could lead to noncompliance with government regulations, large fines, damaged reputations, and loss of business. What some firms are not aware of is that the most ordinary tools and practices – from emails to software configurations – can open a legal organization up to breaches.
Biscom is hosting a webinar on the issue of law firm security and the hidden dangers that lurk within firms. Our Legal Practice Director, Charlie Magliato, will be joined by Jeffrey Brandt, Editor of the Pinhawk Law Technology Daily Digest and noted legal technology thought leader. They will discuss the vulnerabilities posed by the proliferation of mobile devices, the consumerization of technology and cloud computing. In addition, they will also talk about the following which can be helpful to a law firm as they assess their security program:
High-profile data breaches - law firms are no longer immune.
Culture and technology pressures that contribute to increased risks
The increasing demands of both national and state government regulations
How employees, clients and vendors contribute to data breaches
Biscom’s legal business continues to grow! We are pleased to announce the addition of 5 new legal clients. Our growth is the result of Biscom’s laser focus on the legal industry. During the last 2 years Biscom has collaborated with our legal clients to identify and deliver features and enhancements to better meet the secure document needs of law firms and corporate legal departments. Of particular focus for us has been the litigation and practice support groups that have a need for a high performance file and folder upload capability to support production discovery environments. We are also hearing from law firms that are increasingly concerned about the unsanctioned use of hosted file transfer services that increase the firm’s exposure to unauthorized access to confidential client data. Our strong encryption and authentication features as well as on-premise deployment are critical to helping our legal clients offer an easy to use, firm sanctioned self service secure file transfer facility to attorneys and administrative staff. And we are not resting on our laurels. Stay tuned for future announcements of product enhancements designed to improve attorney/client collaboration.
We have a lot of customers using BDS for HR – obviously HR departments have lots of personal information and they do have to work with insurance companies, health plans, payroll, etc. Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, a top law firm with offices in Washington, New York, Tampa, and Baltimore, started off using BDS in its HR department. News of the success led to the expansion of BDS to its litigation support team, and now is firm-wide.
CIO Shawn Mitowski just penned an article on FindLaw detailing how he chose Biscom’s secure file transfer solution to solve the security concerns of e-mail, and other unsecure methods to exchange documents. Big selling points were ease of use and security, as well as large file support. Thanks for the nice article Shawn!
Here at Biscom we take ILTA very seriously. After all, its members are the driving force in the evolution of legal technology. In the past year alone, we’ve exhibited at the last ILTA conference, participated in several product briefings and hosted almost a dozen roadshows on file transfer security. Now I’m excited to announce that we’ve taken the next step: ILTA has invited us to present at its 2011 conference.
The Biscom session, part of the conference’s State of the Art Technology Demos track, is scheduled for August 23 at 1:30 p.m. and will focus on the secure and audited delivery of documents and files.
The session will discuss how to:
Secure the document exchange process
Replace cumbersome and often unsecured FTP sites
Offload large email attachments
End dependence on physical media such as CDs and thumb drives
Meet regulatory compliance
Collaborate in a secure environment with clients and outside counsel
Implement advanced encryption and user authentication
Take advantage of Biscom’s integration with popular software such as SharePoint, Outlook, iManage and Litera
This is a timely decision by ILTA. News is breaking every day on the latest data breaches. These breaches mean costly fines and even more costly long-term repercussions for law firms such as hits to business development and client relations.
So if you are at ILTA 2011, join us to explore security protocols and solutions in the Canal E room of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel at 1:30 p.m. on August 23. And if you’re a Twitter enthusiast, reference hashtag #DEMO7 during the session.
We got a nice mention in Law Technology News announcing three law firms – Gilbert, von Briesen & Roper, and Jackson Lewis – who all selected BDS for their secure file transfer requirements. They are using BDS for large litigation files, confidential health and estate planning documents, and like most of our customers, will find many more areas they can leverage the security and reporting capabilities of BDS.
On April 28, Biscom had the opportunity to support the 9th Annual CIO Forum. The forum, which was created by the Hildebrandt Institute and West, a Thomson Reuters business, hosted more than 30 IT leaders – a majority of which were from AmLaw 200 law firms. The event featured presentations from legal leadership at Viacom, Cisco and Microsoft – as well as Clifford Chance LLP and Bryan Cave LLP – and focused on topics such as cloud computing, outsourcing, data privacy, email management and security.
When you have this much IT leadership in one room, trends and common challenges are bound to come to the forefront. Based upon the presentations and conversations, here are some of the most prominent trends and ideas that dominated discussions:
In spite of the recent recession, there is growth: While many law firm practice areas have experienced contraction due to the economic downturn, litigation practices (including intellectual property litigation) have experienced growth.
Competition necessitates cost control and efficiency: With the forecast for legal industry growth trending towards flat, law firms are prompting growth by wooing clients from competitors. As a result, law firms are forced to turn a keen eye towards reducing cost and increasing efficiency to remain competitive and offer improved client-facing technologies.
IT downsizing: While 2011 IT budgets are experiencing a modest increase, most law firms’ IT headcounts will remain stable or experience a decrease. That means doing more with fewer resources.
In-house vs. outsourcing: CIOs are trending towards keeping core applications in-house while outsourcing content and commodity applications.
Fixed fees: Clients are demanding alternative fee arrangements and fixed fees with incentives for exceeding performance milestones. In order to leverage profit from these arrangements, law firms again are turning towards increasing staff efficiencies and decreasing costs related to delivering services.
Confidentiality is king: While clients these days are demanding that law firms “up the ante” when it comes to protecting their confidential data, there remains a significant lag in adopting new technology and policies to respond to this demand. Law firms, on a whole, continue to evaluate options – as opposed to executing them – to adopt policies and deploy technologies to comply with data privacy regulations. As other industries tighten their security, law firms are seen as vulnerable targets for malicious data breaches.
Do you see these trends applying to your law firm’s IT efforts? What are other trends and challenges do you think law firms are facing when it comes to IT?
During the past quarter, I’ve had the privilege of hosting a series of ILTA roadshows focused on security issues around file transfers. The roadshows – held in Boston, New York and DC – typically welcome around 20 IT professionals each from multiple law firms. The intimate size helps us all to have frank discussions about what keeps IT up at night.
On the forefront: Breaching client confidentiality and regulations.
Beyond the obvious dread of jeopardizing a law firm’s reputation and opening it up for massive fines, there’s a personal take as well. IT leaders are realizing that they are responsible for technology safeguards that protect client data and comply with federal and state data privacy regulations.
The Culprits: Email and FTP Sites
Two methods of potentially risky file transfer kept surfacing during our conversations: Email and FTP sites.
The attendees expressed concern that there seems to be little regard from attorneys and staff when it comes to potential security breaches caused by using email and unsecured FTP sites to transfer client documents and files.
It is almost like the proverbial Sword of Damocles is hanging over legal IT’s head. IT is only one wrong click or FTP error away from heavy fines and potential damage to law firms’ reputations.
Revenge of the Large Email Attachments
The 2010 ILTA member technology purchasing survey identified email management as the biggest issue facing legal IT for the third year running and the roadshow attendees verified that the ever-increasing size of email attachments is a growing support issue.
Is this scenario familiar?
An attorney tries to attach a 50 MB+ PDF to an email addressed to a client. If the email is lucky enough to traverse the firm’s exchange gateway, there is a good chance it will get bounced back due to recipient email size limitations. The attorney then receives an undeliverable message (sometimes not until the next day) and contacts IT for help. Cue the IT support drama!
Would you believe that one of the most popular remedies is to break up a large file into multiple smaller files and then send multiple email messages? This is a quick fix, yes, but doesn’t speak to a law firm’s technical prowess.
And Don’t Even Start us on FTPs
Another common option is for IT to erect an FTP site. After a communal groan, the attendees agreed FTP sites are often difficult to use, challenging to secure and an overall pain in the neck.
What do you think?
Does your law firm face challenges when transferring large files? What do you think are the leading security issues around this?
Leave a comment below so we can continue the conversation.
Coming to a City Near You
ILTA is planning more roadshows for Biscom so hopefully I’ll be in your neck of the woods soon. Feel free to reach out to me at cmagliato at biscom.com if you have a specific city in mind you’d like to see us in. I will keep you posted.
ACS: Law, the UK firm specializing in intellectual property, recently found a big chunk of their e-mail, which contained personal and confidential information on thousands of people, on file sharing sites. ACS: Law is known for its agressive attack of those who share copyrighted material and music on the various peer to peer sites.
As always, remember that what you write in e-mail can be easily compromised, so do not send any confidential, personal, or financial information that you’d like to keep private. Use a secure system like BDS to keep that information secure.
I’ve recently returned from the ILTA Conference in Las Vegas and if you haven’t heard, there’s been a lot of exciting buzz about the event. Biscom had the opportunity to exhibit at ILTA this year, we had a great turn out and when looking back, I’m pleased to say I left with many new connections, friends and valuable information (can’t say I left Vegas any richer though, the casinos won this time).
While the e-discovery, litigation support, and case management were among the usual hot topics at ILTA, discussions I’ve had with legal professionals suggest security and data protection are the new black. We experienced record crowds at the booth from law firms looking to solve the growing challenges of preventing unintended employee data breaches and meeting compliance with data privacy regulations. Furthermore, we were featured as one of the top 20 booths to visit at ILTA, according to Law Technology News we were the only secure file transfer provider at the conference, reinforcing our leadership in the legal market and our commitment to meeting the specific needs of law firms and corporate legal departments.
It was an exciting and successful event and one where we gained valuable insights regarding the needs and challenges of law firms, such as:
• Legal IT is growing increasingly frustrated with the cost and inefficiency of transferring large files through the traditional methods of e-mail , FTP and overnight courier. This was validated by the 2010 ILTA Member Purchasing Survey released at the conference. For the second year in a row, e-mail management was identified as the biggest challenge facing legal IT overall.
• File transfer security is an increasing concern. Security moved from the 7th position last year to the 4th position in the ILTA purchasing survey’s “biggest challenge facing IT”.
Somewhere in the middle of manning the Biscom fort in the exhibit hall, I had the chance to attend two very informative sessions; “Taming the E-mail Filing Monster with iManage WorkSite 8.5.” This session included an open panel discussion of three law firms and how they deployed iManage to move e-mails out of exchange to iManage for tracking e-mail content by matter and reducing exchange storage – a growing need for law firms. The other, “The Changing Regulatory Landscape and its Effect on Law Firms,” featured Beth Chiaiese, Director of Loss Prevention, and Jodi Malek, CIO, of Foley & Lardner. Key topics discussed involved HIPAA, HiTECH and the Massachusetts Data Breach regulations and the specific compliance requirements for each, including the important role technology plays in meeting compliance, such as the encryption and secure transfer of sensitive data.
We also had an opportunity to meet with several members of the press. Sean Doherty, Sr. Technical Editor, Law.com was excited to hear about the new BDS 4.0 features, integration with iManage and plans to integrate with SharePoint (Last December Sean published an in-depth BDS product review in Law.com). We certainly appreciate his time.
Overall, the ILTA Conference was a rousing success and we look forward to next year’s conference.
As an added benefit, you may also enjoy the these post-ILTA reviews:
Come see us at Booth 437 at the upcoming ILTA conference (International Legal Technology Assocation) in Las Vegas August 22-26, 2010. The theme will be Strategic Unity, a concept for integrating technology with the practice of law.
This is a great way to network with other legal technology professionals to attend educational sessions, see what’s coming down the pike regarding compliance, and the latest secure file transfer and collaboration tools.
During the past quarter, I’ve had the privilege of hosting a series of 
I’ve recently returned from the ILTA Conference in Las Vegas and if you haven’t heard, there’s been a lot of exciting buzz about the event. Biscom had the opportunity to exhibit at ILTA this year, we had a great turn out and when looking back, I’m pleased to say I left with many new connections, friends and valuable information (can’t say I left Vegas any richer though, the casinos won this time).
