It’s Halloween Eve and you’re craving some soup. While you’re cooking tomato-basil soup, how do you know you’ve added enough pepper? 

You taste it and adjust as needed. 

When you work out, how do you measure the weight you lost at the end of the week?  

You step on the scale. 

In every aspect of life, even if you don’t realize it, you are always establishing a baseline. The reason makes sense: how can you know where you’re going if you don’t know where you are? How can you measure the distance you’ve traveled if you didn’t track your initial mileage? 

Despite this, most law firms have not established a baseline for their overall IT health.   

Without a solid baseline, firms can’t measure whether they’ve gotten their money’s worth by investing in their own technology and security. Many of these same firms are also prestigious, fighting for client referrals and a solid win record with the hopes of a golden, elite reputation within their specialty. 

But you can’t tell how tasty your tomato soup is without eating it yourself, and you can’t become a no-nonsense law firm without a baseline. Archaic technology and a non-existent cybersecurity approach leaves you exposed to the threat of criminals and a tidal wave of 1-star Google reviews. 

When it comes to cybersecurity – you have 1 of 2 choices 

Choice 1: Assume the risk 

Living life on the edge will always cut you. 

Assuming the risk means only reacting to what’s happening right now.  

If your computer doesn’t have antivirus on it, you ignore it and use it anyway. If your computer gets infected with a virus, you panic and pay for an IT person to repair it. By assuming risk, you put yourself directly in harm’s way. 

All that gets you is a one-way ticket to breaches, loss of reputation, failure, or even bankruptcy. 

Criminals are always looking for loopholes in your company’s technology to exploit and tear open, and your inaction only makes it easier. It only takes hackers five hours or less to infiltrate enterprise-level IT environments and steal data – do you think your firm can react to that before your systems are irreversibly damaged?  

Boo! 

Think again. 

Choice 2: Do something about it 

Avoid the panic and the broken monitors – be proactive in your IT investment journey to mitigate your cybersecurity risk. 

Be warned: doing something about it is not an overnight commitment. Improving your cybersecurity posture is a journey of consistent effort, collaboration, understanding, and investment.  

Also, beware of implementing shiny, new IT tools until you understand their use. Don’t just run in and start buying the most expensive software you can find. It’ll only lead to wasted money and time.  

It all begins with that first step: getting a baseline. Your firm needs a clearly outlined understanding of what risk is today, why that risk exists, and the impact of your investment, should you decide to make one. If your operations completely transform over the next year, but you never calculated your baseline, then the tangible proof of your firm’s progress becomes obsolete. 

To take the first step of your cybersecurity journey, you need an experienced and certified IT partner to perform a SMLA (Security Level Maturity Assessment).  

What is a SMLA? 

A SMLA is a series of benchmark testing that analyze how capable your firm is at preventing, detecting, and responding to cyberthreats in its current security posture. After measuring all captured performance data evidence against the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and CIS security control best practices, your firm is then rated.*  

*The average SMLA score for a law firm is 0.64! 

But at STS, we’re here to dig up all those cybersecurity skeletons in your graveyard instead of just handing you the shovel. 

After we rate your firm, we: 

• Highlight gaps in your cybersecurity program across people, processes, and technology. 
• Compare and contrast your SMLA grade with other firms facing the same challenges and risks. 
• Collaborate with and propose new roadmaps on improving your cybersecurity maturity level while reducing your overall risk. 

So don’t let cybersecurity give you nightmares this Halloween. 

Taste that tomato soup. 

Get an SMLA for your firm today. 

Interested in hearing more about how our SMLA will help you rid yourself of cybersecurity skeletons forever? Click here.