John Baxter
Cyber-attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated and it seems that law firms are increasingly becoming the most attractive prime target for cyber criminals.
Statistics released by the SRA describe how:
- 75% of law firms surveyed reported having been the victims of a cyber-attack;
- For 23 of those that were directly targeted, over £4m of client money was stolen;
- Half of the firms surveyed were found to have allowed unrestricted use of external data storage media;
- 25% of firms are not encrypting their laptops;
- 20% of firms surveyed had never provided cyber training and only 50% of those that had, actually recorded details and evidence of the training.
It goes without saying that the professional reputation of any law firm plays a critical role in their continued success, attracting clients and building long-term relationships, which of course are the life blood of legal practice. But resilience to these growing threats can only be as good as the vigilance and behaviours of the workforce, especially when 90% of cyberattacks succeed because of human error.
Alongside a robust cyber security policy and controls, effective and continuous training is essential if a practice is going to develop an efficient culture of cyber awareness and resilience. Furthermore, training of this nature is paramount to enable individual solicitors and their firms to be able to sign-off their competency statements, with training records providing proof that a firm’s workforce, as a whole, is equipped to act in the best interests of clients and to protect clients’ assets and their money.
Our new range of bite-sized online courses not only includes specialist content specific to law firms, but are also designed to meet the needs of the modern learner, through short, immersive interactions with comprehensive tracking of all completed activities. To achieve this, courses use video learning to get relevant messages to the learner in a quicker, more concise way. In fact, it has been shown that video delivers a message 60 times faster than text.
These new courses have been written and designed by cybersecurity experts and learning specialists at Access Legal and are certified in association with the National Cyber Security Centre. All activities adapt seamlessly between mobile and desktop, and can be completed on almost any device, giving the learner access to content whenever and wherever they need it. Courses adhere to as many WCAG standards as possible and learners can choose from over 100 languages using the inbuilt translation tool powered by Google Translate.
The areas covered include:
- Phishing
- Passwords and Authentication
- Handling Data
- Staying Safe Online
- Reporting Cybercrime
- Protect your business from cyber-attacks
- Responding to a cyber-incident
- Whaling
- Malware
- Safe device use
Find out more about our specialist training services for law firms