Is your law practice growing? How can you ensure your website and IT systems remain secure and grow with you?
While in-house IT and website support can be prohibitively expensive for an expanding business, outsourced options can give you what you need without staffing costs.
Here’s how you can use outsourced website management and IT support to help your law firm grow and flourish safely:
Many clients now want to have the capacity to access and review documents, send you notes and information, sign documents remotely, and pay bills.
Having a securely managed area allows your legal practice to do this, saving valuable hours of time which could be used to market your law firm and find new clients.
This area must be truly secure, though, as it could contain sensitive information about criminal records or charges, medical records, and personal data such as names, ages, addresses, national insurance numbers, banking details, and credit card numbers.
So, ask your hosting company about its server, where it is, what the physical security there is like, and whether it complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which governs the collection, storage, and processing of personal data.
Ensure any chatbots you use have encryption, two-factor authentication, and authentication time-outs. You can also limit the sort of information a chatbot sends.
The biggest security risk from them, though, is the fact humans get involved in the process and might be duped into sending secure information to someone who shouldn’t have it. So, staff training in the sort of ‘phishing’ threat chatbots can pose is vital, and you’ll need robust procedures and policies in place.
Email accounts are often the target of phishers who can appear extremely plausible when they attempt to obtain personal and business information.
Malware is often contained in links from these emails which then goes on to infect your systems.
So, you’ll need to ensure your email hosting server is secure, strong passwords are created and changed regularly, and your staff have good training in how to spot and avoid phishing attacks.
Granting remote access to your business devices is a matter of trust. You need to ensure your IT support providers are experienced, professional, and compliant with data protection regulations such as GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, as we are here at Jötnar Systems.
For a law firm dealing with sensitive data which is likely to be classified as special category in the regulations, having that trusted relationship is vital.
Ask potential providers how many devices they can support if you choose to sign up to a contract with them.
