All About Information: 2010 Solo, Small Law Firm Conference
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While my blog postings are for any old musing, I try to keep news to things that I am up to - writing, presentations, etc. - and gather them here.
Lawyer Responsibilities in a Wired World
The Law Society of Upper Canada regulates the legal profession in Ontario and lawyers coming to practice here from international jurisdictions have to go through an education process. I was fortunate to be asked to speak to them about using legal technology in their practice, particularly to the extent their client confidential data might be impacted. The presentation discussed encryption in law firms, metadata, portable technology, and passwords.
Here is the presentation (Powerpoint converted to Flash). If you can't see the slides, click through to the posting; I'm having relative URL issues with my TinyMCE editor! Once the slides appear, click on them to advance them and show the slide builds. My slides are rarely printable, because there is overlapping content. You can click through the slides using the toolbar at the bottom (or drag along the slider) but the slides only build when you click on them.
I did a similar, but shorter session last December but this was my first opportunity to speak for a longer time to a larger group. Not many laptops in the audience, but my sense is that I could make the content more advanced and still not lose anyone.
Encryption Options for Lawyers
Truecrypt has been a friend of mine for a while now. As a library director, you often have access to information - personnel, financial, strategic - that may not be appropriate to disclose publicly. If you lose your laptop or USB flash drive or memory chip, you can have lost a significant amount of data. I started using encryption to try to minimize any damage my forgetfulness might cause. So I was pleased when the opportunity to write about encryption for portable devices came up at Law Technology News.
The article, entitled Slip Sliding Away (requires free account), discusses partial disk and whole disk encryption. It lists a number of software applications you can use and you can easily supplement your knowledge with a Google search.
What struck me was how the market for "endpoint" encryption has changed in the last year, as all of the major computer security or anti-virus companies acquired or licensed encryption technology. It is an intelligent way for them to complete their security suites and hopefully their options will make it easier for larger organizations to manage their data.
I will continue to use Truecrypt, because it both meets my needs and I'm comfortable with it. I like that I can use a USB drive on my Windows XP laptop at work and pop it up at home on my Ubuntu desktop and enjoy the same encryption in both places. I do not do whole disk encryption on my laptop or desktop PCs but it's clear to me - as I consider my temp directories, Web page cache, etc. - that I have possible chinks in my encryption.
Despite not having a professional obligation to encrypt my data, it is now so easy that it doesn't make sense not to do so. IT staff have to balance implementation with user needs, but for individuals like me, it should be a very simple matter of buying a product and installing it. Thinking about the safety of our data is just one more obligation that comes with the benefits of being mobile.
Laptop Switch Benefited from Heavy Clouds
