Cyber Security is an important concern for every organisation who needs to work to increase their resilience against cyber attacks in ways such as two-factor authentication and updating business software to help make their business more secure.
Cyber crime is a range of illegal digital activities targeted at any organisation. It is focused solely on financial gain and encompasses all strategies such as phishing to selling stolen company data.
A recent example is of a mortgage broker who had been working with a conveyance on a property settlement. The woman had been chasing a summary of her information for a few days, and finally received an email, (towards the end of the week), when her primary focus was to finish and wrap up for the week. She double-clicked on an email, received a request to input in her username and password in order to open the attachment, didn’t consider this inappropriate, and clicked! This was followed by her mobile ringing and (without thinking) she ventured off to finish a few things whilst working from home. Unfortunately, what she didn’t realise, was that she had allowed the hackers access to her details and the client information.
Two hours later, she started to receive calls from her clients saying, that they in turn were receiving strange emails. The young woman soon discovered that her credentials had been compromised, by clicking on the message.
We need to understand these threats evolve and how to anticipate them.
Addressing the key dimensions can lead to a holistic cyber security model, providing the following advantages to any organisation:
- minimising the risk of an attack on an organisation by an outside cyber criminal, as well as limiting the impact of successful attacks;
- better information on cyber crime trends and incidents to facilitate decision making;
- clearer communication on the theme of cyber security, enabling everyone within an organisation to know their responsibilities;
- improved reputation, as an organisation that is well prepared and has given careful consideration to its cyber security is better placed to reassure its stakeholders; and
- increased knowledge of competence in relation to cyber security.
Things like implementing basic cyber security measures such as MFA, multi-factor authentication and timely system updates, or understanding that you can’t trust bank account details in emails and calling to confirm those details before they pay every time, as well as learning how to recognise scam emails.
Be mindful, cybercriminals target what you have of value, not who you are. So, most law firms are targets irrespective of size. Multi-factor authentication is not hard to implement, but the potential consequences of not having it far outweigh the time it takes to set it up and utilise it.
At Warlows Legal we are taking cyber security seriously and want to keep you safe. To this end we are taking the following steps in our practice:
- When you instruct us for the first time, we will ask you to verify your details via our secure portal.
- We will call you before transferring money. Please do the same when transferring money to us. Do NOT trust any emails that may indicate that we have changed account details.
- We have added BePrepared to our range of services to our clients: an online secure vault to store your vital ID information and passwords securely. See our article for more information here.
If you have any queries, please be in touch with Harriet on (03) 9212 0238.
