Richard Lutkus, EnCE, EnCEP, CEH

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In Seyfarth’s second installment in its 2021 Trade Secrets Webinar Series, Seyfarth attorneys Richard Lutkus, Bob Stevens, and Matthew Simmons outlined best practices and steps companies can take to continue to protect intellectual capital, including policies, protections, security concerns, and agreements needed to protect information in a remote environment.

As a conclusion to this webinar, we compiled a summary…
Continue Reading Webinar Recap! Employee Termination & Data Repatriation in the Remote Work Environment

Thursday, April 1, 2021
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Central
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Mountain
10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Pacific

Establishing a process, checklist, or set of best practices for employee termination and data repatriation is essential, especially in a remote work environment. Depending on the remote work policy, including whether there…
Continue Reading Upcoming Webinar! Employee Termination & Data Repatriation in the Remote Work Environment

From court closures and the way judges conduct appearances and trials to the expected wave of lawsuits across a multitude of areas and industries, the COVID-19 outbreak is having a notable impact in the litigation space—and is expected to for quite some time.

To help navigate the litigation landscape, we are kicking off a webinar series that will take a…
Continue Reading Post-Pandemic Litigation Webinar Series

In this unprecedented time, businesses are, more than ever, implementing and rapidly rolling out programs for remote or at-home work by employees. The quick changes in local and state governmental “shelter in place” instructions and Public Heath directives have placed significant strains on remote networks and caused local shortages of laptop computers at office supply and electronic stores across the country.
Continue Reading Cybersecurity, Data Privacy, and Compliance Issues Related to Remote Workers

Cross Posted from Carpe Datum Law

Recently, a widespread global ransomware attack has struck hospitals, communication, and other types of companies and government offices around the world, seizing control of affected computers until the victims pay a ransom.  This widespread ransomware campaign has affected various organizations with reports of tens of thousands of infections in as many as 99 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, Taiwan, France, and Japan. The software can run in as many as 27 different languages. The latest version of this ransomware variant, known as WannaCry, WCry, or Wanna Decryptor, was discovered the morning of May 12, 2017, by an independent security researcher and has spread rapidly.

The risk posed by this ransomware is that it enumerates any and all of your “user data” files like Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, loose email, pictures, movies, music, and other similar files.. Once it finds those files, it encrypts that data on your computer, making it impossible to recover the underlying user data without providing a decryption key. Also, the ransomeware is persistent, meaning that if you create new files on the computer while it’s infected, those will be discovered by the ransomware and encrypted immediately with an encryption key. To get the decryption key, you must pay a ransom in the form of Bitcoin, which provides the threat actors some minor level of anonymity.  In this case, the attackers are demanding roughly $300 USD. The threat actors are known to choose amounts that they feel the victim would be able to pay in order to increase their “return on investment.”

The ransomware works by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The working theory right now is that this ransomware was based off of the “EternalBlue” exploit, which was developed by the U.S. National Security Agency and leaked by the Shadowbrokers on April 14, 2017. Despite the fact that this particular vulnerability had been patched since March 2017 by Microsoft, many Windows users had still not installed this security patch, and all Windows versions preceding Windows 10 are subject to infection.
Continue Reading WannaCry Ransomware Attack: What Happened and How to Address

WebinarDo you and your firm have adequate cybersecurity to prevent yourself (and your confidential client data) from getting hacked?

On Wednesday, December 7, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific, Richard Lutkus, a partner in Seyfarth Shaw’s eDiscovery and Information Governance Practice; and Joseph Martinez, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Forensics, eDiscovery & Information Security at Innovative Discovery, will present…
Continue Reading Upcoming Webinar: A Big Target — Cybersecurity for Attorneys and Law Firms

shutterstock_149599301We are pleased to announce the webinar “Data Security & Trade Secret Protection for Lawyers” is now available as a podcast and webinar recording.

In the second installment, Seyfarth attorneys, Richard D. Lutkus and James S. Yu, was joined by Joseph Martinez, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Forensics at Innovative Discovery. This program covered considerations that…
Continue Reading Webinar Recap! Data Security & Trade Secret Protection for Lawyers

WebinarOn Thursday, February 25, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. Central, Seyfarth attorneys, Richard D. Lutkus and James S. Yu, will be joined by Joseph Martinez, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Forensics at Innovative Discovery to present the second installment of the 2016 Trade Secrets Webinar series. This program will cover considerations that attorneys should take into account when…
Continue Reading Upcoming Webinar: Data Security and Trade Secret Protection for Lawyers

shutterstock_147820271In recent years, the prevalence of data and information security breaches at major corporations have become increasingly more commonplace.  While general awareness may be increasing, many companies are still neglecting to address serious information security issues.

Breached data can include proprietary or confidential information, trade secrets, personally identifiable information, health-related data, privileged communications, and regulatory data.  Such data is often subject to preservation due to pending or reasonably anticipated litigation, government investigation, due diligence, or other applicable legal matter, meaning the data is routinely transferred and shared with outside counsel for analysis and support of clients’ claims and defenses.

Many law firms provide guidance regarding information governance to clients, however more times than not, firms fail to realize that they too are also responsible for following similar guidelines. Appropriate precautions must be in place throughout a firm to protect the integrity and sanctity of client data, prevent unauthorized access, and to ensure timely remediation.  However, firms must also have this data available for litigation response, analysis, and review. Therefore, keeping data entirely offline is rarely an option.

There are several pillars of governance that law firms should consider when examining the handling of both their own data as well as that of clients.  As a fiduciary of their clients’ data, firms that fail to address these issues will eventually find themselves in an ethical nightmare, that when applied to a partnership creates a considerable problem.Continue Reading Untrusted Advisor: How Your Law Firm May Fail to Protect Your Data

shutterstock_1488153Over the past few years, users have become increasingly aware of the inherent dangers of connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Unfortunately, existing security vulnerabilities in the underlying network hardware may still open a user’s computer to security issues.

Recently, Wired reported that security firm Cylance discovered a vulnerability in a specific brand of network routers deployed throughout many hotel chains…
Continue Reading Unsecured Networks More Susceptible to Data Theft