The past year saw some of the largest regulatory fines ever levied, increased global coordination across different regulatory bodies and the continued evolution of the legal market through new technologies and services.
As we head into 2014, the legal landscape is evolving faster than ever before, and general counsel need to stay on top of industry trends, emerging technologies and the complex regulatory environment in which they operate.
From data privacy to cloud-based legal services, here are five things general counsel need to know for the coming year:
1. Data Privacy Gets Even More Serious
Google, Yahoo, Facebook—all are data behemoths under intense public scrutiny for potentially misusing client data and for not guaranteeing its integrity and security. But maintaining data privacy and security is not just a PR issue—the legal ramifications of data leaks and cyber-attacks have never been more pronounced.
IT departments around the world are renewing their efforts to develop and perfect systems to protect sensitive data from cyber-terrorism and from hackers trying to access client and customer data. GCs need to understand and to articulate the impacts that these security measures have—especially when they fail.
If data is compromised, what are your liabilities? What is the appropriate course of action? What is your protocol for notifying your customers and other end-parties?
There is a delicate balancing act here: how to protect the privacy rights of those custodians whose information you have while acknowledging the public’s right to access this information. The need to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressively pushing your business forward while also guaranteeing privacy and maintaining transparency will weigh more heavily on the minds of GCs in 2014.
Regardless of your stance, you need to develop an action plan that you can implement from the get-go should your company be hit with a massive data breach or cyber-attack. You need to know if people are having this discussion in your company. If you’re not at the table, you should be.
