Each year we share our predictions for the digital security world for the year ahead. One of our predictions for 2017 is that there will be an increase in home-attached devices being compromised. This is due to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT); everyday objects, such as kettles, fridges, and televisions, that connect to networks, enabling them to send and receive data via the internet.

These devices are designed to make our lives easier to manage. We can preheat the oven using our smart phone before we leave work, or control our sprinkler system while we are away on holiday. Read more

If you have been paying attention, it is likely that you will have heard murmurs about the upcoming changes to the way that personal data will be protected in Britain. You may even have heard us outline some of these changes ourselves in our blog ‘How will the changes brought in by GDPR affect your business?’. For almost 20 years, we have relied on the Data Protection Act to be our sole regulatory legislation for the responsible processing of personal information. On the 25^th May 2018, this will change.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of compliance regulations that organisations and businesses will be obligated to adhere to. When processing data, these robust, much stricter set of rules will be the benchmark for companies to meet, in order to avoid the fines that incompetence, and ignorance, will claim. Despite the huge changes that GDPR is promising for UK businesses, there still seems to be a certain amount of unawareness across the country, no more so than in the Legal Sector.

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Threats to cybersecurity are a concern for every industry and business. However, the legal sector remains an especially attractive target due to the wealth of sensitive information held by law firms.

Patent data, merger and acquisition information, negotiation information, and protected witness information are just some examples of sensitive commercial data and intellectual property that are highly desirable to cybercriminals, hacktivists, and state-sponsored parties.

It is easy to see why legal firms are rich with opportunity for these groups.

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Understanding your company position in terms of digital security is vital to knowing whether you can and will be protected moving forward. Although having layers of security to protect you against the multitude of threats a company can face is preferable, there is a bare minimum standard that you should be aiming for.

That bare minimum would be a Gap Analysis of your current situation. This is a method of assessing the differences in performance between a business’ information systems or software applications, to determine whether business requirements are being met and, if not, what steps should be taken to ensure they are met successfully. The first step is always to understand the present and isolate the issues that must be addressed moving forward. Read more

Ransomware has become a decidedly ‘trendy’ cyber-attack topic for the media to cover. We looked at it ourselves earlier this year too, in our post on ‘how to deal with ransomware’. In it, we discussed how this particular form of cybercrime can affect people, and what is at risk. We touched on the turmoil that hackers have caused in hospitals and schools, as well as how businesses should look to educate their staff on preventative measures. Read more