Legal Use Case

A national business law firm decided to proactively increase their cybersecurity vigilance and improve their existing security posture. They were able to go beyond standard compliance and bolster their endpoint security with Digital Defense’s Frontline Vulnerability Manager (Frontline VM). This VM solution, delivered by SaaS platform Frontline.Cloud, allowed the Firm to identify vulnerabilities that were not seen by other scanning methods. They were then able to proactively remedy those vulnerabilities and thwart potential cyberattacks, all while streamlining processes and lowering costs.

The Challenge

With the risk of security breaches growing year over year, and increased targeting of legal entities, the Firm wanted to reinforce its security and further ensure compliance. Law firms are often the primary target for cyber criminals looking to gain access to intellectual property, trade secrets, and other business capital. In 2019, 26% of law firms reported having been victims of some level of security breach*.

The Firm was looking for a trustworthy partner who could provide vulnerability scanning and management and act as an extension of the Firm’s limited IT team. The vendor needed to be highly accurate and trustworthy as the Firm is not only beholden to American Bar Association guidelines, but also HIPAA and GDPR regulations, among others.

Solution requirements included:

• High level of accuracy, reducing the efforts spent on false positives
• Cost savings, demonstrated over time
• Granular results that improve prioritization
• Easy to implement
• Easy to use

*https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/publications/techreport/ abatechreport2019/cybersecurity2019/

Results

The Firm experienced several benefits of using Frontline VM, including:

• Reduced Scan Times — Frontline VM Scanning Engine reduced scan times by almost 80%. This allows quicker response times to any enterprise- wide issue the Firm may encounter.
• Accurate Results, Fewer False Positives — Recurring security assessments are reconciled and correlated to produce more accurate assessment data. Less time and fewer resources are used validating false positives. Frontline VM results have less than 1% false positive rate.
• Ease of Use — Frontline VM delivers powerful technology that is simple to implement and user friendly. The lightweight software did not weigh down the Firm’s systems and was easy for their IT team to deploy and use.
• Cost savings — With no hardware or software to purchase and maintain, and fewer IT resources dedicated to the ongoing execution of the vulnerability management program, the Firm saved over 40% in 3 years when compared to traditional premise-based tool deployments. The cloudbased offering proves more cost effective and a better solution for organizations focused on reducing the carbon footprint of their data center.
• Customer Confidence — Law firms, large and small, have seen current and future clients growing more concerned with their firm’s ability to keep confidential information safe. In fact, amongst law firms surveyed by the American Bar Association, 35% of firms have received a client security requirements document from prospective clients**, which continues to be a growing trend. With Frontline VM, the Firm is able to provide clients security assurance and the peace of mind needed to put their trust in the organization.
• Better Prioritization — Frontline VM features Security GPA®, a metric developed to provide granular and easily relatable measurement of improvements made to network security. Security GPA considers the perceived criticality of individual systems and system types. The Firm’s Security GPA has steadily increased since the implementation of Frontline VM. Such an increase translates into reduced likelihood of a network security breach occurring and better protection of digital assets (e.g. attorney-client privileged information and personally identifiable information).

**https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/publications/techreport/2017/security/

*At the time of this case study, Fortra VM and its corresponding security solutions were referred to under the Frontline brand.