Industry News: ESG5

The Target: Houser LLP, a U.S. law firm that specializes in serving high-profile financial institutions.

The Take: The data included names and one or more of Social Security number, driver’s license number, individual tax identification number, financial account information, and medical information.

The Vector: The company said certain files were encrypted during the incident and were “copied and taken from the network.”

This breach highlights the extreme importance of timely software updates for known software vulnerabilities, not only in systems directly under a firm’s control, but in third-party systems the firm relies upon as well. The longer a firm, or its vendors, hold out on deploying the most up-to-date software for their systems, the greater the chance an attacker will exploit the issue.

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