Our clients depend on us to keep their data secure and to continue to serve them if we are hit by a major disruption.
Every office now has a tested business continuity plan. We were the first law firm to achieve BS25999-2 accreditation for the quality of the plans we have put in place. Our offices carry out exercises every 12 to 18 months to check that our people know what is expected from them in the event of a major disruption. We are now involved in a mentoring programme with the Law Society to help smaller law firms develop their own business continuity systems.
We take our obligations in relation to information security and data protection seriously. We have established procedures and provide regular training in relation to confidentiality, security and data protection. In addition, a comprehensive Information Security Policy has been implemented, as part of which we provide guidance on identifying the most sensitive information held by the firm and the additional steps required to protect this category of data. We provide a data protection e-learning programme to inform our people of what constitutes personal data, what the key data protection concepts are and what their rights and responsibilities are.
We have begun to implement automated information barriers globally and roll out a more sophisticated document management system for e-mails, and have commenced auditing our data protection compliance in specific departments as part of the firm’s binding corporate rules programme. The implementation and/or further development of these key strategic projects will continue this year.
