Increasingly for in-house counsel, it’s obvious that the company needs to have its data secured. It’s also become clear that law firms and third-party vendors say they’re going to be secure, though in some circumstances, the promise may not reflect the reality. So what are in-house counsel to do to ensure data security?

The answer is likely conducting a data security audit of a company’s law firms and third-party data holders. However, for those who haven’t conducted these sort of audits before, the task can be daunting. In a poll of the audience at the “Auditing Your Litigation Support Providers” webinar conducted by the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) on Sept. 27, 40 percent of in-house counsel attendees did not know to what percentage of outside counsel they had sent security assessments.