October 2021

Most common IT challenges for lawyers in 2021

The legal industry is what we, in the tech industry, call ‘late adopters’ when it comes to modernizing their business with newer technologies. Traditionally, legal professionals were not very tech-savvy, and were dependent heavily on the physical handling of documents. Now is the time to spread awareness of the technologies that are available to the legal industry to prepare present lawyers, and future generations of lawyers with the most appropriate technologies. Let’s explore the most common IT challenges that today’s law firm are currently experiencing, and ultimately help suggest the right solutions they need to empower their practice.

Data Leaks

Data leaks or “data breaches” are the most common result of cyber-attacks. A data leak happens when a hacker has accessed sensitive information of a company, and in many cases, has released the information into the public domain without permission.  

The legal industry is a prime target for hackers because of the nature of their business. They deal with sensitive, and confidential information on a daily basis. Due to the lack of security used by many law firms, it is easy for hackers to perform data breaches via malware, phishing, and even denial of service. An email security suite like ExchangeDefender PRO would protect a law firm from email-borne attacks, phishing attempts, and would most definitely prevent data leaks.

Phishing Scams

Phishing attacks have taken over the internet in terms of being the most popular form of cyber-attack. It is the most common way for hackers to win your sensitive information. In fact, Verizon’s most recent Data Breach report claimed that 70% of data breaches involved Phishing.

A phishing scam is when a hacker sends a fake email that appears to be coming from a trustworthy company. The user clicks on the link inside of the email, is presented with a fake landing page, and is deceived into entering their login credentials, or credit card information.

Document Management

Overcoming document management challenges are a major struggle for law firms as the industry has been extremely dependent on physical document copies. The accumulation of these documents as records are proving disastrous for legal practices that have been in business for years. ExchangeDefender’s Web File Server solution would take care of any document management issues. It offers unlimited storage, is extremely secure, and can provide limited access to a lawyer’s clients for seamless collaboration.  

Compliance

Compliance is a major issue for law firms when it comes to the technology aspect. They are responsible for ensuring that their IT solutions are secure enough to keep data safe, and is secure enough to prevent a data breach. This is difficult when many firms do not currently use an advanced email security suite. As cybersecurity providers, it is our duty to keep law firms safe and to ensure that they adhere to state, federal, and international regulations.    

At ExchangeDefender, we are unique just like our clients. Our team members are all from different nationalities, backgrounds, and expertise.

We do not aim to offend or demoralize any individual or groups, unless they are spammers or hackers. 🙂

Some of the industry standard terms used in the backend, that have been part of IT for decades, may sound offensive to clients in the modern workplace. Non-technical clients who are not accustomated to traditional IT terms are rightfully shocked when they see terms like “master-slave replication”, “whitelist”, and other similar racially sensitive wording.

SPAM filtering and email security should not be offending our clients so we’ve gone through an audit of our web site, our portals, our mobile apps, and our backend in an effort to rephrase some of the industry terms that may be offensive. 

Our client base has changed over the past 24 years, (our services are predominantly used by non-technical staff) and this was a part of our larger effort to make ExchangeDefender more user-friendly. 

We want to make our services more accessible for users that have never used ExchangeDefender, or an enterprise security software; you will see fewer IT acronyms. Instead, we’re rephrasing our services to sound like spoken English, for example: To block senders from sending you SPAM you will now add their address to a “Block list”.

The most profitable ExchangeDefender solutions for 2021 will certainly not surprise you. Most of us have had to change how we work, and where we work from, because of the covid-19 pandemic. These special circumstances have caused an increase in demand for some IT solutions over others. Our recent survey data shows that our top three most profitable solutions this year focus on data security, and business continuity.

ExchangeDefender PRO

ExchangeDefender PRO is our pride and joy of our entire service portfolio. It provides clients with advanced email security that protects their organization. ExchangeDefender PRO is compatible with all major email service providers, including Outlook and G-suite for business. Email-borne threats like SPAM, viruses, malware, phishing, spoofing, and more are prevented by our all-in-one email protection. 70% of our partners this year have indicated that selling email security features, like SPAM filtering, and Anti-Virus has made their IT business profitable.

Corporate Encryption

Keeping company, and client data safe has become the forefront of security solutions this year. Hackers are on the rise, and the need to secure information is more critical now than ever. ExchangeDefender Corporate Encryption is the second best-selling solution in our service portfolio this year. Encryption enables businesses to encrypt emails simply, and share documents safely from a secure portal, or inside of Outlook with a one-click encrypt option. A whopping 83% of our partners noted in the survey that they are currently selling ExchangeDefender Encryption, or have recently added the service to their MSP business.

Live Archive

Our rising star, Live Archive has been voted ‘rookie of the year’ for its email continuity benefits. ExchangeDefender Live Archive provides organizations with email outage protection, the ability to send and receive email during a service outage. The market demand has skyrocketed for businesses that require that company email be available at all times. The continuity solution is always on, provides real-time archiving, and includes up to one year of rolling storage. Partners took advantage of the high demand, and saw an increase of new clients ready to pay for the ability to prevent email outages as they work from home. The shocking low price for the service made it a no-brainer for businesses who need to keep their organization sending and receiving email without interruption.

We are stepping up our game when it comes to ExchangeDefender support, making it faster and easier to get answers and support when you need it, how you need it.

It’s no secret that we’ve spent most of our Covid-19 time improving the user experience and making our products and services easier to use, manage, and support. We’ve upgraded documentation, our portals, our web sites, and even created automated troubleshooting apps that help you fix issues without waiting on or dealing with support.

Starting Wednesday, October 6th, 2021 the support experience will change for the better as well. Our primary goal with this update is to speed up the resolution time (time between problem being reported and it being fixed). We’re trying to create a more predictable and flexible way getting help from us regardless of how technical you are.

Enhancements

Sidebar

Over 80% of our support requests are answered by pointing users to documentation. With that in mind, we’ve redesigned the process to better identify the service, issue, and the user that is experiencing the problem. The system automatically reviews everything as you’re opening the ticket and advises if there are known issues with your account/configuration, and provides links to documentation and fixes. We expect this to be very popular with our growing service providers (we’ll train your staff for you!)

Collateral

If everything appears to be correct (we cannot replicate the issue remotely and the issue is on the client device or network that we do not have access to), the ticket process will immediately ask for additional collateral and troubleshooting info. The goal here is to collect enough information to get the issue addressed right away instead of going back and forth.

We also tried to strike a balance across our client base when it comes to technical expertise and urgency. If you have a problem that is urgent and you want us to drop everything to help you – we can do it! If you’re not very technical, or not in a rush, or don’t have the time to do diagnostics – we can help.


Summary

We’re been quite busy during Covid-19 lock/slow-down and we wanted to do something to improve the experience and quality of our technical support. The new system puts you in control of the support. You choose how urgent the issue is, how much diagnostic information you provide, and the service level you need. We’re going for a win-win with this release: giving you more control, more access, more flexibility, more documentation – and a faster resolution time for the end user.