In December 2016, three Chinese nationals were charged by federal prosecutors for profiting from insider information about mergers and acquisitions by hacking into the networks of law firms who were working on deals. According to CBS News, “The three men made more than $4 million in profits by buying stock in companies that were about to be acquired and then selling the shares after the acquisitions were announced.”
This type of illegal activity could have been avoided if these law firms had taken the appropriate steps to protect their networks. Each law firm has specific business requirements and goals, regulatory and compliance requirements and experiences with malware or data loss.
The goal of Tech Garden’s Security Health Check is to produce a series of actions these law firms or other industries could have taken to tactically and strategically bring their risk and their compliance within levels acceptable to management and to provide a framework and process for managing to that level.
The lesson to be learned from the December 2016 hacking is that even companies who may not think there is exposure, may have some and it can be costly for these firms to recover from the negative repercussions from such acts. “This case of cyber meets securities fraud should serve as a wake-up call for law firms around the world: You are and will be targets of cyber hacking, because you have information available to would-be criminals.”
Your customers and business partners want proof that you are doing what is necessary to manage the vulnerabilities and risks within your environment. When customers share their data with you or business partners open their network to you, they do so with trust that you are doing the right thing to protect your network. Don’t be tomorrow’s headline.
To assess your organization’s risk, contact a Tech Gardens specialist today to determine your network’s vulnerabilities today.
