In the Cyber Century, every person with a smartphone is a reporter and it only takes seconds for an incident to go viral and stay there. If an incident arose, it was shut down by sending off a “cease and desist” to a newspaper and another to the evening news. Have the ability to navigate the new era of reputational risk. In the past, GCs dealt with reputational risks at the speed of fax. “A traditional legal answer might be ‘Well, let me look up what the law says about it.’ My answer is usually more like ‘You tell me whether it’ll be socially valuable and I’ll tell you if it’ll be legal.’”Ģ. When Google Books came online, copyright hawks cried foul. When Google Search launched, there were questions if it would even be legal to query documents online. In a 2016 interview with Stanford Lawyer Magazine, he tells of the many technological concerns he faces each and every day. Google’s GC Kent Walker provides a good example.
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You must be able to understand the developments in new technology and advise your company on how to move forward, both legally and ethically. In 2014, according to a Reuters news story, three Chinese nationals posed as information technology company employees to digitally infiltrate the servers of an unnamed law firm, stealing financial documents that allowed them to make $4 million from insider trading before they were caught by the authorities. Dated mainframes, for example, are a prime target for hackers. Too often, lawyers are behind the curve when it comes to adopting the new technology and security techniques. Have knowledge of leading-edge technological tools and progress. And show a willingness to use it. WHAT SKILLS DO YOU NEED TO BE TODAY’S GC?ġ. If you were hired for your legal experience and business acumen, now you need an additional skill set to face the Cyber Century-one that embraces technology and puts the company out in front of digital danger.
Disruptors such as Netflix, Amazon and Uber threaten to dethrone industry giants, and uncharted situations caused by new cloud computing law and self-driving car regulations can stymie even the most pedigreed of lawyers. What’s more, the challenges presented go beyond stolen data. The initial estimate was put at 143 million, but it’s since been raised to 145.5 million and now 147.9 million. In March, Equifax again raised the estimate of consumers affected by its data breach suffered in 2017. Meanwhile, news of digital danger only seems to get worse. Fear of a cyberattack is on the rise, the survey revealed, with more than one-quarter saying their company had been the victim of a data breach in the last two years, versus 22 percent who had reported a recent breach in the 2016 survey. While regulatory issues continued to hold the top spot, chief corporate attorneys said many of these new regulations dealt with data privacy.
2 position (up from third in the 2016 survey). The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Chief Legal Officers 2018 Survey asked chief legal officers: “What issues keep you up at night?” Data breaches moved into the No.
Most GCs are rapidly shifting their priorities to keep pace with the digital times. If not, they leave companies vulnerable to unpleasant surprises that could have dire and long-lasting consequences. Recent news events and studies demand that as digital threats loom large, general counsels must shrug off old rules of engagement that had them focused on more traditional (less digital) issues. Any of these can be the opening shot of a bruising battle that can quickly escalate to a crisis.Īs general counsel, are you ready to face these challenges? In what we are calling the Cyber Century, the first signs of danger appear on a screen a hack, a viral video, a tweet. This article first appeared in the ABA Journal on the 8th of May 2018 and is republished here with its kind permission.
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