How Encryption Can Protect Your Clients’ Confidential Data and Intellectual Property

By Brad Smith
October 2021
 

Information security is vital for every business. Adequate data security is even more important for legal organizations considering they are entrusted with highly sensitive data about their clients, including health care information, financial reports and information about trade secrets. 

Like any other organization, law firms are vulnerable to malware, phishing, MITM (man in the middle), and other attacks. Plus, firms are increasingly becoming a favorite target for hackers. They hold confidential data such as personally identifiable information (PII), intellectual property, corporate financial details and emails, which are all highly attractive targets for hackers. 

With that in mind, clients are starting to demand that law firms have security measures in place to ensure their data is protected from online threats. So what can legal professionals do to ensure the security of their client’s data and that of the firm? Well, for starters, they can encrypt it. It’s one of the best tools when it comes to protecting sensitive data. 

Encryption uses cryptography to conceal information by altering it so that it appears to be random, unintelligible data. With encryption, you need a password to view data stored on hard drives, computers, smartphones and in the cloud, as well as in transit data on the internet. It also makes it harder for cybercriminals to gain access to your systems and steal sensitive information.

WAYS THAT DATA CAN BE ENCRYPTED

Encryption ensures that if hackers were to breach your system and steal data, they wouldn’t be able to use it for nefarious activities because it’s scrambled and unintelligible. Here are some of the ways through which you can encrypt data and make it more secure for your legal organization.

Smartphones                                        

We store tremendous amounts of sensitive data on our smartphones and tablets. Fortunately, these mobile devices come with built-in encryption features to protect your messages, photos, documents and any other personal data stored on the device. This ensures that should a smartphone be stolen or lost, the data is still safe. The latest versions of iOS and Android devices are encrypted by default. 

ALA
ALA

Computers and Laptops

Staff use computers to store sensitive personal or work-related information, creating cybersecurity risks, especially as more firms embrace work-from-home arrangements. Laptops are especially vulnerable to theft and can easily fall into the wrong hands. Fortunately, you can protect laptop computers and all the information stored in them with full-disk encryption.

Popular computer operating systems such as Windows and macOS have built-in encryption to help secure your data. BitLocker, the Windows full-disk encryption feature, allows you to encrypt the entire OS drive and other drives mounted to your PC. The built-in macOS FDE tool, FileVault, protects your entire drive.

Online Traffic

You can also encrypt your network by using a virtual private network (VPN). This tool offers one of the best ways to protect sensitive information in transit, as a VPN scrambles your internet traffic and routes it through a secure tunnel to keep it secure from online threats. The VPN also hides your IP address so no one can tell your location. In fact, using a VPN for traffic encryption is one of the most effective ways to protect information on the internet. 

Email 

Every day, we transmit a lot of sensitive data in emails and attachments. If you are not careful, hackers can intercept your emails and steal confidential information. Fortunately, you can reduce the risk of email attacks by encrypting your emails. Most email clients, including Gmail and Outlook, use a secure HTTPS connection. 

This means that your emails are encrypted using a standard Transport Layer Security (TLS). Some mainstream email clients use additional encryption standards to keep hackers and other threat actors out of your email communications. Some of the most common encryption standards used by email clients include OpenPGP, GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) and Mailvelope.

Messaging Apps

Billions of people across the world use popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal to communicate. To ensure privacy, messaging apps come with built-in encryption, which not only improves privacy but also facilitates secure communication. The level of security and privacy varies from one chat app to another. Signal is said to have the most secure protocol out of all the popular messaging apps.

Your legal organization’s information is valuable, which will always make it an attractive target for cyberattacks. But encrypting it is one of the best tools legal professionals can use to protect their clients’ sensitive information and intellectual property.

About the Author

Brad Smith

Brad Smith

Technology Expert
TurnOnVPN

Brad Smith is a technology expert at TurnOnVPN, a nonprofit promoting a safe and free internet for all. He often writes about his dream for a free internet and unravels the major flaws behind big tech.