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More in-house lawyers dedicated to cyber security than before
New research shows a greater number of organisations with a dedicated legal counsel for cyber security matters compared to two years ago.
Jerome Doraisamy
The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) has released its “2020 State of Cybersecurity Report: An In-House Perspective”, which – by way of surveying 586 companies across 20 industries and 36 countries – purports to shed light on the growing role that legal departments have with regards to organisational cyber security policies and procedures.
“In a majority of cases, this lawyer is responsible for cyber across the enterprise and is in an [executive-level] position in 56 per cent of organisations,” ACC wrote.
These dedicated counsel are, more often than not, situated at the executive level (56 per cent), while 38 per cent are staff lawyers and the remaining 7 per cent have “alternative” arrangements, such as a mixture of executive and staff-level legal counsel in a large legal department, or a single counsel situated at an intermediate level, reporting to an executive-level counsel.”
For those whose legal departments have dedicated cyber security counsel, a majority – 60 per cent – said that their cyber security lawyers are responsible for coordinating a cyberlaw strategy throughout the company.
Meanwhile, 40 per cent responded that their dedicated lawyers focus on specific aspects related to cyber security, such as products counsel or incident response, but without responsibilities for an organisation-wide approach to the matter.
Elsewhere, the report found that the legal department has a co-equal voice in setting the strategy to mitigate cyber risk in three out of five organisations (60.6 per cent), whilst just over one-third (36.3 per cent) said the legal department does not have this proportionate voice.
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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