P2P

64 S ince the pandemic hit, many office-based organizations have transformed into virtual operations. Nearly every attorney who can do so is remaining to work remotely. Apart from a few hiccups like pets and children photo-bombing video meetings or fellow workers sizing up your home office décor, remote working has turned out to be a reasonable substitute for being in the office, and for the most part legal professionals have been able to maintain good levels of productivity. COVID-19 restrictions have forced law firms and legal departments to provide employees with remote access to internal systems via cloud-based applications, VPN tunnel or other types of secure remote access. Security is paramount because legal professionals are constantly working with sensitive information originating from internal or external servers, aggregating information from multiple devices and systems, and sending key documentation to colleagues, clients, or third parties. From the remote worker's perspective, the focus naturally tends to be on meeting deadlines and client expectations rather than compliance in handling data. During a typical work-from- home day, legal professionals will send text messages, make calls, download and upload data, scan documents and/or hold video conferences. In today's bring your own device (BYOD) era, when a laptop freezes or a phone runs out of juice it's second nature to reach for the nearest working device—company-authorized or not—to keep the wheels in motion. While this blurring of the line between personal and work devices may increase efficiency, without appropriate measures in place it can also be a data security minefield. Organizations that have embraced cloud computing are in the best position to manage this profound shift in the way people work, which obviously has accelerated tremendously in the wake of the pandemic. While many businesses across a broad range of industries have shifted to hosting and accessing information via web-based software services or solutions, the legal profession is still moving much more cautiously to the cloud than the rest B Y S U N D H A R R A J A N Staying Compliant During COVID and Beyond Pitfalls and Pointers for Effective Data Handling

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