Imagine any of the following scenarios:

  • You returned to your office this morning to find it had burned to the ground overnight. You cannot salvage anything but a few crispy bits of your pencil sharpener.
  • Someone swiped your laptop on the train this morning while you were on your way to work. Nobody seems to have seen the person who did it.
  • While working on a brief, you are just putting on the finishing touches when your computer’s hard drive stutters a few times, then dies completely.
  • Last night, someone broke into your office and, realizing your clients’ personal information would sell for far more than your computer hardware, rifled through your files, making off with your client information sheets.

Now, ask yourself a few questions.

  • Will you ever be able to recover your physical data? Unless it was protected in a fire-proof safe, few attorneys keep spare client files.
  • How long will it take to recover your electronic data, and what will you have lost? In other words, how solid is your backup system, and do you have off-site backup?
  • How much will it cost to purchase credit-monitoring for all of your past and present clients? If your laptop is stolen and your data is not encrypted, or a thief makes off with part of your paper files it seems only fair.
  • How will you (a) prevent, or (b) mitigate the effects of each of these scenarios?

(more…)