It’s 2020 and that means it’s time for a reminder: everything that touches an electronic device is susceptible to being hacked. While that may not be the nicest thing to be reminded of, it’s a good idea to get into the habit of reviewing your IT at the start of each year to ensure that best practices are being followed. In light of that, here’s a brief primer on a few ways you can keep your data secure in the new decade:

Tip 1: Use The Right Kind of Password

There are a lot of different ways to create passwords in this day and age, from Chrome’s automatic password generation to software like LastPass. That said, there’s an abundance of reasons why you might not want to use these technologies - chiefly, if you change your mind, it can be a pain to reset all of your passwords and stop using the service. In light of that, you might want to generate your own passwords. The trick here is to create very long passwords out of arbitrary words that are easy to remember. You might remember the XKCD comic about passwords; if you don’t, click that link, and you’ll learn one of the most efficient ways of creating a strong password.

Tip 2: Multi-Factor Authentication

Passwords serve a very important purpose: they tell the service in question that you are, in fact, who you say you are. You can pretty readily see the problem with that - if someone gets your password, they’re not you, but the service doesn’t know that. That’s where multi-factor authentication comes in. Another way of identifying that you’re you is to use a device that only you should have in your possession - like a cell phone. In conjunction with passwords, that’s a much more effective way of guaranteeing that you are who you say you are. You can mix in security questions and a wide variety of other authenticators to foil any scammers.

Tip 3: Backups

So far, we’ve discussed tips for avoiding cyberattacks, but that doesn’t help you if your law firm catches fire. While we all truly hope this never happens, physical damage can destroy years of work if it’s not backed up. There’s a lot of work that you might have on secure drives - create backups of those drives. There’s other work that may only exist in physical form - make copies of that work. Store all of this saved information far away from your firm; the more backup points you have, the less susceptible you are to a catastrophe.

Those are all the tips we have room to post for now, though we may do a part two. You should always have cybersecurity in mind when working as an attorney - after all, data is your most valuable asset. Got so behind on keeping your IT standards up that you can’t make an appearance? Don’t worry - we’ve got court appearance professionals waiting in the wings to cover for you anytime.