Wicki Partners at international conference on cybersecurity
In addition to their legal activities in the Zurich office, the attorneys of Wicki Partners regularly participate in international conferences to exchange ideas with colleagues. Attorney at Law and IT Law Specialist (DE) Sven Kohlmeier participated in the Comparative Law Program held by the International Municipal Lawyers Association(IMLA, USA) and the Asociación de Letrados de Entidades Locales(ALEL, Spain) in Seville in mid-September.
He spoke at the conference on Cybersecurity Best Practices and Considerations in the Time of Covid. According to figures from the National Center for Cybersecurity (NCSC), there were a total of 21,714 cyber incident reports in 2021, including 908 for malware, 312 for hacking and 43 for data leaks (source: NSCS).
In particular, attacks with so-called ransomware (extortion Trojans, crypto-Trojans, blackmail software) pose a considerable danger, especially for companies. By means of an infiltrated Trojan malware program, all data on the data carrier is encrypted. Only after payment of a ransom in cryptocurrency is the data supposed to be unlocked. Although there are tools for decoding the encrypted data on the website www.nomoreransom.org (which is also supported by the Swiss Federal Office of Police fedpol ), there is no guarantee that all data can be recovered.
Ben E. Griffith (left) and Sven Kohlmeier at the conference on Cybersecurity Best Practices and Considerations in the Time of Covid
Especially in times of home office and teleworking - not only during the pandemic - basic protective measures for cybersecurity must therefore be observed. This is all the more true since the new Swiss Data Protection Act (see our article on this subject) will come into force, imposing extended data security obligations and reporting requirements in the event of data incidents.
Sven Kohlmeier and his colleague Ben E. Griffith(Griffith Law Firm, USA) provide the cybersecurity "Best Practice Checklist", which you can download here for free(PDF).
We support you with employee training, legal and contractual advice on the procurement of new software, and data protection and cybersecurity incidents. Feel free to contact Sven Kohlmeier.