This one’s occasionally behind a paywall, so if the link does you no good I apologize. If you search the title of the article on Google (“Law Firms Tout Cybersecurity Cred”) you can usually find it.
Anywho, Christopher Matthews wrote an interesting article for The Wall Street Journal on how companies that have suffered cyber intrusions are actually turning to law firms before turning to forensic investigators. That one threw me for a loop because I assume forensic investigators are best suited for handling this work and, more to the point, lawyers generally have no clue about cyber. In fact, there were a spate of articles on how hackers (specifically the Chinese) were targeting law firms as a way to get at their clients’ juicy IP. The thinking was that law firms have poorer cybersecurity, so hackers could break into a law firm and thereby get to the client.
However, Matthews explains that law firms offer something that forensic firms cannot: “attorney-client privilege and the secrecy it confers.” Moreover, “[l]aw firms also help companies navigate the patchwork of federal and state laws governing public disclosures of data breaches.”
At the risk of taking too much from a paywall protected article, I’ll just have to refer you to this link to the story. It’s worth a read.
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