Legal counsel being left behind on cybercrime: report

afr.com:

General counsel at Australia’s largest companies are “falling behind” on risk as skills shortages, a lack of influence and increasing workloads leave big business exposed, a new report warns.

The report by Ashurst’s risk advisory team found that corporate general counsel “are struggling to keep up with the pace of change” and that “all feel significantly exposed in one or more areas of risk”.

Despite a spate of high-profile cyberattacks, an “overwhelming” number of companies reported that they were “not adequately prepared for cyber risk or attack”, with 40 per cent of general counsel “not comfortable” with their organisation’s defences against cyberattacks.

Philip Hardy, Ashurst Australia’s head of risk advisory, told The Australian Financial Review that while organisations had begun investing in technical cyber defence capabilities, legal teams were only thought about as a secondary consideration.

“In reality, in the event of a major cyber event, a lot of legal issues are triggered immediately. It’s only dawning on leaders now how important an investment it is to have legal teams upskilled and au fait with the issues,” Mr Hardy said.

With regulators and government agencies increasingly interested in private companies’ preparedness and accountability for cybercrime, the time and skills burden on general counsels will only increase, the report found.

Despite the significant legal requirements attached to cybercrime, such as mandatory notifications, the obligation to protect personal data and customer remediation, less than half of legal teams felt they had sufficient in-house experience to deal with cyber risk, and the consequences of an attack, effectively.

Reflecting this increasing burden, 65 per cent of general