Cyber Survey Underscores Perspective of In-House Lawyers

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In May, the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Foundation released its “State of Cybersecurity Report: An In-House Perspective,” This report conveys the results of the organization’s far-ranging survey on this topic. In addition to the statistics elicited from 617 in-house lawyers (based in 33 countries), the report also includes many comments from the respondents.

This report is full of interesting statistics.  Some of the highlights include:

  • One in three respondents indicated that either their current company or a previous employer had experienced a data breach.
  • Two-thirds of in-house counsel expect to see the legal expenses in the cybersecurity sphere to increase over the coming years.
  • Two-thirds of respondents indicated that budgets devoted to cybersecurity issues will increase over the next year.

And for general counsel at small to medium sized businesses, on page 28 of the Executive Summary, the report provides a self-assessment tool that covers the various best practices in the cybersecurity arena.

The same self-assessment tool should benefit large companies as well. Although highly regulated companies have pressures up and down their supply chains that go way beyond that tool, which would be considered minimum standards for most of them.