Locked Down: In-House Legal Chiefs Fight Privacy, Security Risks

Threats of data breaches and cyber-attacks keep chief legal officers and general counsels up at night—even if they don’t directly oversee security at their companies.

The evidence for such worries isn’t just anecdotal. Nearly 900 Chief Legal Officers surveyed in 2023 by the Association of Corporate Counsel and e-discovery firm Exterro cited data protection privacy rules among their top legal challenges.

Privacy and data security are multifaceted, complex issues for companies, their customers, and their employees. Large-scale hacks—often orchestrated through savvy social engineering or low-tech spam email—occur regularly, and data breaches carry the risk of material and reputational damage. It’s ...