15 Essential Cyber Security Controls for Law Firms

Essential Cyber Security Measures for Law Firms

1. Implementing Strong Password Policies and Multi-Factor Authentication

Password security is a fundamental aspect of cyber security for law firms. Implementing strong password policies, such as requiring complex passwords and regular password changes, can help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information. Additionally, enabling multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to verify their identity through a second form of authentication, such as a code sent to their mobile device.

2. Securing Law Firm Networks and Devices

Securing the network infrastructure and devices used by law firm employees is crucial to protecting confidential information. This includes implementing firewalls, antivirus software, and encryption protocols to safeguard data in transit. Regularly updating software and firmware can also help patch vulnerabilities and prevent cyber attacks from exploiting known security flaws.

3. Encrypting Sensitive Data and Communications

Encrypting sensitive data and communications adds an extra layer of protection, ensuring that even if unauthorized parties gain access to the information, they cannot decipher it. By using encryption technologies to secure data both at rest and in transit, law firms can mitigate the risk of data breaches and protect the confidentiality of their clients' information.

4. Phishing Scams and Business Email Compromise

Educating your whole organisation on the latest email phishing scams is vital.  Providing more rigorous training for your leadership team as well as finance teams and other sensitive practice groups will help thwart the success of business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

5. Supply Chain and Third party security reviews

Having a thorough process in place for all third party vendors and particularly those that interact with sensitive firm or client data is essential.  This goes beyond a contract review and should look at validating the security measures the vendor has in place to safeguard your data.  If you are not happy then be prepared to walk away or insist on the right to audit.

6. Privileged Access Management Controls

Your technology teams should already be using the concept of ‘least privilege’ for all sensitive admin accounts.  Having a secure vault in the form of a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution in place will provide greater control and protection of sensitive admin accounts.  These can be set to be used once only, time bound and rotated on a daily or weekly basis.  Doing this will prevent account take over attempts, impersonation attempts and limit an attackers ability to gain control of your environment and maintain persistence.

7. Beyond MFA - Hardware Security Keys

MFA is a must for protecting all keys critical systems, but if you want to go one step further then using a hardware token such as Yubico will provide more robust protections against ransomware and account take over attempts.

8. Application White Listing

Application White Listing or Application Control is a key component of the ASD Essential 8.  Many organisations avoid doing this as they perceive it to be too hard or costly to implement.  The reality is that yes it is hard to do but with strong project management, the right processes, leadership backing and of course the right tools this security measure will pay dividends in protecting your business.

9. Monitoring

Monitoring all of your key systems and services and retaining logs for a minimum of 12 months will greatly enhance your organisations ability to uncover nefarious activity and to recover quickly if you are compromised.

10. Policies and Authority to Operate

Policies as bare minimum should be aligned to an international recognised standard such as ISO27001 and having an Authority to Operate process in place for all technology components will provide strong accountability and governance.

11. Vulnerability Management

Having a robust vulnerability management process and plan in place that tightly aligns to your organisations patch management regime is paramount to prevent attackers from exploiting the latest vulnerabilities in your environment.  Attackers no longer take months or weeks to act on vulnerabilities, they are responding within hours of a vulnerability becoming publicly known!  It’s an arms race and so if you are not patching your most critical vulnerabilities on your most sensitive systems within hours then you need to pick up the pace.

12. Security Awareness Training

Educate your people as much as possible and bring them on the journey with you so they become an extension of your security team.  This includes offering additional training specific to sensitive roles as well as mandatory annual security awareness training.

13. Incident Response Plans and Table Top Exercises

The old cliche of everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face stands true! So make sure you have a plan and that it is regularly tested and that your leadership team undertake table top exercises at least annually.  The purpose of the exercises should be a dry run of your processes, to test communication plans, are the controls you have in place work, does everyone know what to do.

14. Endpoint Security Controls

Not all endpoint security controls (EDR) were made equal 5 years ago but now most are catching up and are on a level playing field. So make the most of what you have and ensure you have those controls fully optimised. That means enabling automatic isolation of endpoints if they should become compromised so that they can’t harm the rest of your organisation. (If you can’t isolate systems then maybe start looking for an alternative solution!)

15. Data Retention

Almost every data breach over the last 10 years has one commonality and that organisations are guilty of holding on to data beyond its sell by date!  So even if you think that doesn’t apply to you, take a long hard look at the data you are collecting and storing and identify opportunities for improving retention periods.  This will include reducing liability concerns by deleting data that is no longer required.