This week on T3 a brief look at the prevalence of mobile devices and the lawyer’s obligation to preserve client information.
News.com reports that over one-third of laptop computers and cell phones do not have security measures installed or activated. As more lawyers ditch the laptop for enhanced cellphones or PDAs, the chance that they will be lost or misplaced is greatly increased.
Some companies are recognizing the risk, and taking a venerable term from the takeover era–poison pill–and applying it to tech. This brand of poison pill would allow a firm’s IT department to send a signal to a lost or stolen mobile device and wipe the data clean. Let’s hope it’s backed up first and not think about what damage the “rogue IT guy” could do with this.
We have come a long way from the early days of legal tech when commentators and ethics opinions examined whether e-mail used by lawyers must be encrypted.
But now rather than over-caution we may be taking business tech casual a bit too far. Many lawyers face a daily threat that confidential information could be compromised, and have relatively easy means to safeguard it.
What’s in your (digital) wallet?