https://www.xperience-group.com/news-item/legal-firms-embrace-digital-change/
Recently, we have seen a rise in legal firms continually being targeted by cyber attacks; due to the large sums of money and confidential information held. All of this bad press is giving rise to concerns about new technologies. However, if you want to work smarter not harder, it’s important for you to embrace change.
Are you one of the 74% of legal firms who plan on investing in new technology over the next two years? If so, your top priority will be security – by nature you will be holding highly confidential customer information so you’ll want to make sure it’s safe and there are no points of weakness.
Contrary to popular belief, new technologies, like cloud computing, can enable you to achieve your objectives and offer improved security – yes, even The Cloud! But adopting new technology doesn’t come without doubts and concerns. Here we look at the top challenges faced by legal firms and identify how Cloud can actually help overcome them…
When considering implementing new technologies, The Solicitors Regulation Authority identified confidentiality and data protection as key areas of concern. Solicitors deal with copious amounts of highly sensitive and confidential information so it is only natural data security is a top priority.
In recent months, legal companies have been attractive targets for ransomware attacks due to the vulnerability that comes with significant reputational consequences associated with failing to protect clients’ sensitive information. With Cloud, your data is held safe and secure in a purpose built data centre, with preventative and redundancy measures in place which outstrip what is affordable to most businesses. The high end security measures include firewalls, vulnerability scanning, encryption and network intrusion detection to name a few. By taking advantage of these solutions, you will benefit from increased control and better data protection, removing risks and vulnerabilities. So in the event of a disaster or ransomware attack, you can be safe in the knowledge your data is backed up and remains secure.
The general assumption is data is best stored on servers housed locally where you can keep an eye on it, but what happens when your hardware fails? Relying on a single point of failure means you have zero redundancy. If you are reliant on servers you’ll have likely experienced some pain; time is money so when a server goes down you can be left out of pocket.
When your data is stored in The Cloud, you can be rest assured that your day to day activities won’t come to a standstill in the event of a failure. Data centres guarantee 99.9% uptime with N + 1 redundancy (which means even if a disruption occurs, there are multiple fail-over measures in place, so to you, business will continue as normal).
Lawyers often need to access critical documents on the move, so accessibility of systems and information is essential. Moving to The Cloud gives you a secure and resilient platform providing access to your software and business data from anywhere using a web enabled device.
Leading Belfast based law firm MKB Law (an Xperience Group customer) commented on the benefits of moving their business to the cloud “Now with just one click, wherever you are, you can view your entire desktop, just as you would at the office, whatever the device. This ease of use has encouraged quite a few of our directors to work at home without the distractions they’d get in the office.”
Accessing data from a mobile device might start some alarm bells ringing – what if the device is lost or stolen? With cloud technology your data is not stored locally and you get added benefits of encryption, as well as passcode or fingerprint verification.
We understand that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution for legal firms considering cloud- but regardless of where you are on your cloud journey, we can help.
If you’re ready to take the next step and see if your business is ready to embrace Cloud contact us today for a FREE Cloud Readiness Report.