- Does your firm protect confidential and “privileged” electronic information?
- How many laptops has your firm “lost” during the past five years?
- Does your firm use encryption to protect documents, e-mails, hard drives and off-line storage?
- How does your firm protect electronic information subject to nondisclosure agreements (NDA)?
- Are you aware that “deleted” electronic confidential information is not "erased"?
- How many people know the password to log onto your computer?
- Are you aware that electronic communications cannot be relied upon to be genuine unless encryption is used?
- Does your firm understand that ISPs, Web hosting and e-discovery repositories may have access to confidential information and the “privilege” found in electronic communications?
- Does your firm require those sending confidential information to use encryption technology?
- Can you explain how the language placed at the end of an e-mail can stop someone reading the message? (example: "This e-mail may contain confidential or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please advise by return e-mail and delete immediately without reading or sending to others.”)
- Does your firm require the recipient of the e-mail to go to the bottom of e-mail to decide if the e-mail is confidential before reading it?
- Does your firm routinely indicate that confidential information is not encrypted and therefore not safe?
- How many PDAs has your firm “lost” during the past five years?
- Have you used the “subject line” for e-mail and perhaps disclosed confidential and privileged information?
- Does your firm indicate to clients that electronic communication cannot be relied upon to be genuine?
- How does your firm document cases of mistaken e-mail transmission of confidential information and the privilege?
- Does your firm have software and hardware to protect Wi-Fi laptops, PDAs, Blackberries and other hand-held devices containing confidential information and the privilege from loss or theft?
- Does your firm indicate in its e-mail disclaimer that it will reimburse the unintended recipient for costs involved in the deletion and erasing of confidential information and the privilege?
- How does your firm protect confidential electronic information from “identity theft?”
- Do you understand that confidential information and the privilege is only as safe as the “weakest link” in the chain of electronic communications?
1 This is part one of a five-part series, “100 Questions for Surviving the ‘Digital Age’,” for those involved in bankruptcy matters. The author encourages readers to submit suggested questions to him for inclusion in this project by emailing Jack Seward
2 Jack Seward is a digital forensic accounting technologist in New York and provides litigation support, including e-discovery and computer forensics, for bankruptcy, insolvency and judgment-enforcement cases. Mr. Seward is a co-chair of ABI’s Commercial Fraud Task Force Committee and a contributing editor for Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice, 2d by Thompson West. He is also a contributing editor for the ABI Journal columns “Straight & Narrow” and “Beyond the Quill.”
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