A growing business risk and concern: cybersecurity threats

In today’s fast and complex business world, companies of all types and sizes routinely confront bracing challenges across a wide universe of considerations.

Legal risk in the corporate realm is a constant and outsized concern. And it is a potential across virtually every dimension of business affairs, whether in employer-employee interactions, matters focused upon intellectual property, disputes over contractual phrasing or interpretation, or issues surrounding business formation and planning.

And these days, too, one additionally notable and especially troubling concern is also emerging with alacrity in businesses from every industry, namely this: cybersecurity threats targeting a company’s most sensitive data.

There is certainly no dearth of front-page stories noting that fact over the past year. Hackers target financial companies for confidential customer data they can manipulate for fraud-related purposes. Medical facility records are infiltrated by criminal organizations in so-called “ransomware” cases. This year’s presidential election has featured allegations of political manipulation by global actors engaged in cybersecurity efforts that undermine election integrity.

The bottom line: Every sophisticated business actor in California or elsewhere across the country that centrally relies upon computers and the Internet to drive growth has grown increasingly vulnerable to efforts aimed at infiltrating internal systems for unlawful purposes.

And that reality, of course, breeds material concerns regarding business risk and liability.

A presidential commission authored an extensive report just last week that urges the incoming administration to immediately take broad-based action against cybersecurity threats.

The nation’s businesses will of course greatly benefit from enhanced protections that better thwart infiltration of their most confidential company information.

Any business principal with questions or concerns regarding cybersecurity might reasonably want to consult with an experienced business and commercial attorney in order to implement a sound and viable strategy aimed at deterring hacks and also dealing with them responsibly should they occur.