Law firms lacking disaster preparation

ALMOST HALF of lawyers are insufficiently prepared for their firm experiencing a disaster scenario, according to new research.

Of 752 professionals canvassed in a YouGov poll carried out for BT Global Services, 47 per cent said they either did not understand their organisation’s business-continuity plan, or simply hadn’t taken the time to read it.

Over a fifth (22 per cent) did not even know whether their firm had produced such a plan.

Moreover, over two-thirds (67 per cent) of employees in the legal sector believed their firms relied on the common sense, loyalty and efficiency of their workforce.

Ragnar Lofstedt, professor of risk management at King’s College, London, said: “The spirit of resilience is clearly alive and well, showing that employees of UK firms are prepared to battle on in adversity. However I am concerned that, positive though this resilient streak is, it is actually exacerbating the problem by making employees blasé to the threats that exist in the post 9/11 world.

“Corporations understand the threats, but they need to communicate them better to their staff.”

The most significant business-continuity concerns identified were technology outage (37 per cent), a hacking attack or computer virus (30 per cent) or another incident that might result in a potentially disastrous loss of data (29 per cent).

Almost a tenth (nine per cent) of people polled also reported having lost a personal device that contained important business information.

Mark Ronson, vice president of manufacturing, construction and services at BT Global Services, concluded: “For a law firm, keeping data safe is crucial, but it’s only partly down to technology.”

“If employees don’t know the process for reporting and managing a data leak, it’s likely they’ll ignore a missing BlackBerry or memory stick, giving the business no chance to lock down the data.”