Cross-Sector Council Overview
The mission of the Legal Cross Sector Council (CSC), is to facilitate a collaborative community to coordinate information security and risk management education, research, standards and focused alerts for lawyers and security professionals at law firms, or those who work with legal departments at their corporations, and to provide close communication with government agencies to help protect sensitive information and data infrastructure from attack. The Legal CSC also strives to communicate with the security technical community about the impact of security and privacy legislation, regulations, and case precedent.
There continues to be a steady rise in cyber-attacks against U.S. companies with damages that include tens of millions of dollars, lost trade secrets, lost data, and threats to critical infrastructures. Law firms and legal departments routinely hold and communicate enormous stores of highly confidential client data for these important keystones of our economic infrastructure. Because of the low barrier to entry and high value of the data held by law firms and corporate legal departments, the legal industry is a prime target for cyber criminals and “hacktivists.”
The Legal CSC is committed to identifying and sharing best practices and security protection techniques for both physical and cyber disciplines to minimize risk to individuals and infrastructure, which is fundamental to InfraGard’s mission. This includes providing early detection and response to known general cyber-security risks, threats and attacks in order to mitigate potential damage and remediate vulnerabilities; focusing on threats and vulnerabilities specific to law firms; discussing regulations and precedents that may affect a law firm’s ethical obligations of privacy, privilege and reporting; sharing information on both cyber and physical security issues and collaborate on solutions; acting as a liaison between members and government for cyber threats and response; driving improved standards for cyber and physical security issues; and, establishing a point of reference for lawyers and the vendors that support them to raise the bar in reducing risks in the industry.
Contact this Cross-Sector Council
If you’d like to learn more about how the Legal CSC is serving the Greater Houston Area, reach out to CSC Leadership through Legal-CSC@infragardhouston.org.
For additional sector-specific information as defined by the Department of Homeland Security, visit https://www.dhs.gov/cisa/critical-infrastructure-sectors.