How Can You Stop Your Firm’s Website From Being Hacked?

New guidance from the Law Society of England and Wales has been produced to help stop lawyers from becoming the victims of cyber crime.

New guidance from the Law Society of England and Wales has been produced to help stop lawyers from becoming the victims of cyber crime.  

According to the report: “There are more than 1.86 billion websites on the internet and around 18.5 million (1%) of these are infected with malware every week. 

By 2021, it is predicted that cyber crime will cost the world £6 trillion annually – up from £3 trillion in 2015. Computer hacking is one of the world’s major problems, with new cases of data breaches and releases of ransomware occurring at an ever increasing rate.”  

With some helpful advice on how to protect your practice, the report sets out a number of crucial steps legal firms can take to stop an attack from happening.   

According to the report, making sure that your firm’s website is always up-to-date with the latest anti-virus and firewall software and security updates, will help you to keep one step ahead of the hackers and make you less vulnerable to attack.  

Furthermore, staff should be trained to use strong passwords, and additional security measures such as two-factor authentication (2FA) are advised. The Law Society also instructs firms to use website monitoring tools to alert them to any suspicious behaviour. Firms should also use an online tool to search for any signs of SEO poisoning.   

Other recommendations include ensuring that your website is backed up regularly. This will allow you to revert to an older version if your site is compromised. Firms should also invest in robust hacker protection that offers appropriate protection, including web application firewall protection, monitoring, and incident response.   

Training employees to spot and understand threats is also advised. With human error still the biggest risk when it comes to data breaches, this will help your staff to avoid clicking on dangerous links that could install malware. Users should also be encouraged to be diligent when receiving emails with attachments – even when they are sent from a familiar source.   

As cybercrime continues to be a law firms’ biggest challenge one way you can protect your business from falling victim to email modification fraud is to install Lawyer Checker’s OnDMARC’s service. This sophisticated web-based system effectively secures your firm’s email. It works by actively blocking phishing attacks and preventing 3rd parties from impersonating your email domain to any recipient such as your clients and employees. 

Finally, the Law Society recommends becoming Cyber Essentials certified. Launched in 2014, Cyber Essentials is a certification scheme backed by the Government. It is designed to help businesses uncover risks that they may not otherwise be aware of and guard against the most common cyber threats. You can find out more about Cyber Essentials here. 

Leaving your website unprotected provides hackers with easy access to sensitive data. However, by following these simple steps, it is hoped that law firms across England and Wales will be more aware, and better protected against this growing risk.