This past week members discussed matter management, security frameworks and more. Do you want to learn more about the LegalSEC Summit? Scott Rolf, LegalSEC Summit Co-Chair and Chief Information Officer at Tucker Ellis told me all about the upcoming Summit. Explore curated sources on these topics including some from ILTA’s treasure chest.
Matter Management
As we heard from Connie Brenton last week, too often client and law firm tools prove counter-productive. We can ask attorneys to create unique client communications for each matter or only communicate using email and not text, but these request may not prove effective for the attorney or the client. Are there tools to help us better manage all the data coming in and going out for each matter? For solutions consider the webinars, Matter Center for Office 365 and Do It Yourself: Self-Service KM. Mergers and lateral moves can also cause matter headaches. The New York Times reported in January “Law Firm Mergers Rose Again Last Year” with no expectation of the merger market slowing in 2016. To help with merger mania and matter transfers, the ILTACON 2015 session, Handling Lateral Lawyers and Matter Transfers in a World of Mergers and Movement, has you covered.
From Security 101 to Tabletop Exercises – The LegalSEC Summit is Coming, June 9th and 10th.
I recently spoke with Scott Rolf, LegalSEC Summit Co-Chair, about some of the sessions at the Summit and the new Security 101 Workshop preceding the Summit on June 8th. The LegalSEC Summit committee designed the Security 101 Workshop for attendees with minimal security experience who have a background in technology and/or in management. Scott discussed a “disconnect” that often exists for people in management because the work and software in security differ from typical network or desktop technologies. The Security 101 Workshop will provide an opportunity to get up to speed on security technologies, processes and concepts and help to benchmark organizations’ security programs. The workshop will not only define the many acronyms in the security industry but also explain incident response, regulatory concerns, privacy matters, security awareness, the NIST and ISO frameworks, security organizations and client audits.
After a quick study in the Security 101 Workshop, get ready for 2 full days of programming. I asked Scott to share a few highlights from LegalSEC Summit sessions developed by ILTA Peers. He listed many highlights from incident response to data classification to presentations on tools by security experts. With several sessions on incident response, the Summit will cover the development of an incident response program and a tabletop exercise organized in two parts. In part one, presenters will demonstrate a live response to an incident based on a pre-built scenario. In part two presenters and attendees will interact and take a deeper dive to identify the steps and strategies to keep and eliminate in the incident response plan. Scott also mentioned a session by the chief architect of Bro, an open source security monitoring system. He will address how law firms can increase their security through a network defense framework.
Scott has noticed a “maturity” in the attendees over the last few years. He sees more willingness to collaborate. Scott explained that legal security and information security professionals needed time “to be initiated to the ILTA sharing environment.” He is thrilled LegalSEC Summit attendees now discuss the tools they have and how they use them with their peers. The LegalSEC Summit provides rich content on security but also the opportunity to network and meet with experts and vendors.
We often ask industry leaders what keeps them awake at night. In closing my conversation with Scott, I flipped this question around and asked him what tools, policies or processes help him sleep better. He shared, “The convergence of information into a central store helps to really ease the pain of the day-in day-out drudgery of monitoring. Using dashboards and computer algorithms to automate the inspection of novel events can save hours of time. As an example, we run a tool called Splunk.” The LegalSEC Summit has a session on Splunk, “Active Logging: Splunk Tips and Tricks.” Perhaps after these sessions more security and technology professionals will get a good night’s sleep. One can dream, right?
The Security Frameworks NIST and ISO
ILTA has some new security programming with blog posts and associated podcasts on ILTARadio. Get a primer on ISO 27001 in the “What Is ISO 27001 Anyway?” blog post and ILTARadio recording. Next learn about NIST in the “What Is NIST Anyway?” blog post.
SOMETHING EXTRA – Remote Staffing and the Financial Systems Series
A member recently asked about managing remote staff. The most recent Peer to Peer asked experts this very question. Read their best practices in “How to Create a Successful Remote Workforce.”
Whether we bill by tenths of an hour or not, we must occasionally assess and re-assess the strengths and weaknesses of our financial systems. Set aside some time soon to review the ILTA on-demand presentations in the New Financial Systems Series. This series takes you step by step through the selection and implementation processes for a new financial system.
As ILTA’s content curator, I’m always monitoring the discussion forums to discover what topics are top-of-mind among the members. Each week, I focus on a few areas that spark your interest, and I provide some curated resources to assist your own information-gathering on the topics. If there are specific topics you would like assistance exploring, please contact me at joanne@iltanet.org