The rise of virtual court proceedings has likely corresponded with a bump in the number of documents and digital evidence being uploaded to court IT systems. While some attorneys and judges alike may be willing to embrace a virtual future for the courtroom, getting there may require courts to make some serious—and very expensive—upgrades to their technology infrastructures.

For instance, one of the chief vulnerabilities that digital court IT systems face could actually originate from the attorneys or public that they were designed to serve. “The court systems are accepting documents that could contain malicious code from a lot of sources, and they can’t possibly vet every single source that would be uploading a filing,” said Christopher Ballod, managing director of the cyber-risk practice at Kroll.