Cybersecurity Expert

Guest Article by  Andy Pearch, Head of IA Services at  CORVID Andy Pearch outlines one of the biggest cyber threats facing the legal sector, and steps that can be taken to save law firms from the devastating consequences. Cyber crime is a growing concern for all businesses across every industry, and even more so for those who operate in vulnerable sectors, such as law firms. A threat report from the NCSC highlighted that 60% of law firms reported an information security incident in 2018, an increase of 20% from 2017. Law firms, as with all modern day working practices, are heavily reliant on technology – the sheer amount of expected connectivity makes everyone vulnerable. Research enforces the scale of the problem: in 2017, 60% of law firms reported an incident, but that’s only those who identified an issue. There has also been a significant 42% increase in reported incidents in the last five years. This could mean that either businesses are more aware so are reportin...

Twitter boss, Jack Doresy, had his Twitter account was hacked at the end of August, with hackers using his account to send a stream of offensive messages to his 4.2 million followers. It appears Jack was using his mobile phone to provide multi-factor authentication access to his Twitter account, a good solid security practice to adopt, however, it appears his Twitter account password and his mobile phone SMS service were both compromised, the latter probably due to either sim card swap fraud social engineering by the hacker, or by an insider at his mobile network service provider. A database holding over a million fingerprints and personal data was exposed on the net by Suprema , a biometric security company. Researchers at VPNMentor didn't disclose how they were able to find and access the 'Biostar 2' database, nor how long the data was accessible online. Biostar 2 is used by 5,700 organisations, including governments, banks and the UK Metropolitan Police. In a similar...