77% Of Lawyers Can’t Be Trusted With Protecting Your Confidential Data…Surprising?

Whoever said you can’t trust a lawyer? Well whoever it was probably had a point. Recent survey data suggests that most lawyers take virtually no action to encrypt and protect online communications with clients other than including a confidentiality statement somewhere in the message body, which in effect does nothing to protect the data. A measly 22% used a form of encryption for sending emails to clients and email encryption is something you’d think would be the bare minimum for security when sending legally sensitive documents over the internet.

Attorney Robert Ambrogi has written extensively about such issues stating that:

“If I were to leave a document on a table entitled, “My Deepest, Darkest Secrets,” under which I wrote, “Please do not read this unless you are someone I intended to read this,” how securely would you think I’d protected myself?

That, effectively, is all the majority of lawyers do to protect confidential documents they share with clients and colleagues”

Apparently the lack of security in the legal profession is fairly unnoticed because legal firms are reluctant to report such data breaches.  At the bare minimum Robert Ambrogi says legal firms should start by encrypting emails, using secure file sharing services and examining cloud sharing services more closely before using them.

Source: LawSitesBlog, Via: Network World

Image #1 courtesy of security faqs