{"id":118207,"date":"2025-05-07T11:19:33","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/07\/congratulations-on-your-merger-hope-you-enjoy-the-malware\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T11:19:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:19:33","slug":"congratulations-on-your-merger-hope-you-enjoy-the-malware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/05\/07\/congratulations-on-your-merger-hope-you-enjoy-the-malware\/","title":{"rendered":"Congratulations On Your Merger! Hope You Enjoy The Malware."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glossy press releases never capture the hidden costs of a merger or acquisition. There\u2019s always some eye-popping top-line value number and the audience is left to imagine the toll exacted by integrating accounting systems, aligning org charts, and telling staff that all the corporate swag they got in lieu of bonuses over the years is now against the office dress code. But what\u2019s rarely thought about is the lurking cybersecurity dumpster fire in the server room, gift-wrapped and waiting for you!<\/p>\n

At last week\u2019s ILTA Evolve, the panel \u201cThe Cybersecurity Evolution: Legal Risks and Best Practices for Law Firms,\u201d confronted this oft undiscussed topic. For those of us who think cybersecurity will prove the hot issue of 2025<\/a>, the conversation led by seasoned tech veterans should scare any lawyer out there eyeing a merger while ducking their cyber training.<\/p>\n

Picture it: a nice, low-key acquisition targeting an Australian firm of 10 employees. If only all deals could be this easy! Nobody bothers looping in IT or a security team before the deal, because why would you? How much trouble could 10 people get into?<\/p>\n

Spoiler: so much trouble.<\/p>\n

After handing out shiny new laptops, IT received the casual call asking to plug one of the Down Under servers with all their client data into the network. In a moment of \u201cbetter late than never,\u201d the tech folks got a chance to do some diligence before hooking it into the Matrix. After checking with the Australian tech people (who assured them that they had McAfee\u2026 a line that drew concerned chuckles from the ILTA audience), they brought up the console to show their effort before saying, \u201cOh, wait a second, that\u2019s weird. It\u2019s been turned off on this server. Let me turn that on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ding. <\/p>\n

Ding. <\/p>\n

Ding.Ding.<\/p>\n

Ding.Ding.DingDingDingDingDing.<\/p>\n

They turned on the lights and a thousand digital cockroaches scattered. All told around 900 alerts popped up. Brute force hackers out of Singapore had got in through remote desktop. After a detour through the Soviet bloc, a bunch of malware landed on there.<\/p>\n

Good thing someone bothered to look before plugging in Malware Mary.<\/p>\n

But this is the kind of cybersecurity \u201coh crap\u201d moment that can happen all the time because security can be an afterthought in M&A diligence until it\u2019s too late. It\u2019s going to get worse too. In a chat with the folks from PromptArmor<\/a>, I learned about malicious, invisible code getting buried in files that humans won\u2019t see but the AI will read when these files inevitably get fed into it.<\/p>\n

And while lawyers should make this a concern for their clients\u2019 deals, they might want to look in the mirror too. Because law firm mergers are a thing too, and they aren\u2019t immune from cyber threats.<\/p>\n

Despite the current health policy coming down from RFK Jr\u2019s brain worm, the best defense to viruses comes from early inoculation and that\u2019s just as true for computer viruses. Take trainings. Change passwords. Keep your system updated. Yes, even if it might mean restarting it once in a while. On this point, of all the cool things a product like Aiden<\/a> can do in keeping everything updated and minimizing vulnerabilities, one of the most practical is the ability to find windows for those dreaded reboots and piggybacking off the unavoidable Microsoft resets to keep lawyers blissfully unaware that they\u2019re down. <\/p>\n

When attorneys hold up the works because they don\u2019t have time to waste while trying to close their next deal, consider catching them in a couple phishing tests beforehand to drive home how much of a risk they are. As the panelists noted, most of the time the lawyers \u201calready spent more time trying to get out of the training than it would\u2019ve taken to just finish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the paradox: organizations want security, but they don\u2019t want to do<\/em> security. They want secure outcomes without secure behavior. They want magic buttons, not tedious awareness campaigns, or annoying policy enforcements.<\/p>\n

But cybersecurity requires active participation. Preferably before you turn on the monitor and find out it\u2019s an Airbnb for hackers.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Congratulations On Your Merger! Hope You Enjoy The Malware.<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glossy press releases never capture the hidden costs of a merger or acquisition. There\u2019s always some eye-popping top-line value number and the audience is left to imagine the toll exacted by integrating accounting systems, aligning org charts, and telling staff that all the corporate swag they got in lieu of bonuses over the years is now against the office dress code. But what\u2019s rarely thought about is the lurking cybersecurity dumpster fire in the server room, gift-wrapped and waiting for you!<\/p>\n

At last week\u2019s ILTA Evolve, the panel \u201cThe Cybersecurity Evolution: Legal Risks and Best Practices for Law Firms,\u201d confronted this oft undiscussed topic. For those of us who think cybersecurity will prove the hot issue of 2025<\/a>, the conversation led by seasoned tech veterans should scare any lawyer out there eyeing a merger while ducking their cyber training.<\/p>\n

Picture it: a nice, low-key acquisition targeting an Australian firm of 10 employees. If only all deals could be this easy! Nobody bothers looping in IT or a security team before the deal, because why would you? How much trouble could 10 people get into?<\/p>\n

Spoiler: so much trouble.<\/p>\n

After handing out shiny new laptops, IT received the casual call asking to plug one of the Down Under servers with all their client data into the network. In a moment of \u201cbetter late than never,\u201d the tech folks got a chance to do some diligence before hooking it into the Matrix. After checking with the Australian tech people (who assured them that they had McAfee\u2026 a line that drew concerned chuckles from the ILTA audience), they brought up the console to show their effort before saying, \u201cOh, wait a second, that\u2019s weird. It\u2019s been turned off on this server. Let me turn that on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ding. <\/p>\n

Ding. <\/p>\n

Ding.Ding.<\/p>\n

Ding.Ding.DingDingDingDingDing.<\/p>\n

They turned on the lights and a thousand digital cockroaches scattered. All told around 900 alerts popped up. Brute force hackers out of Singapore had got in through remote desktop. After a detour through the Soviet bloc, a bunch of malware landed on there.<\/p>\n

Good thing someone bothered to look before plugging in Malware Mary.<\/p>\n

But this is the kind of cybersecurity \u201coh crap\u201d moment that can happen all the time because security can be an afterthought in M&A diligence until it\u2019s too late. It\u2019s going to get worse too. In a chat with the folks from PromptArmor<\/a>, I learned about malicious, invisible code getting buried in files that humans won\u2019t see but the AI will read when these files inevitably get fed into it.<\/p>\n

And while lawyers should make this a concern for their clients\u2019 deals, they might want to look in the mirror too. Because law firm mergers are a thing too, and they aren\u2019t immune from cyber threats.<\/p>\n

Despite the current health policy coming down from RFK Jr\u2019s brain worm, the best defense to viruses comes from early inoculation and that\u2019s just as true for computer viruses. Take trainings. Change passwords. Keep your system updated. Yes, even if it might mean restarting it once in a while. On this point, of all the cool things a product like Aiden<\/a> can do in keeping everything updated and minimizing vulnerabilities, one of the most practical is the ability to find windows for those dreaded reboots and piggybacking off the unavoidable Microsoft resets to keep lawyers blissfully unaware that they\u2019re down. <\/p>\n

When attorneys hold up the works because they don\u2019t have time to waste while trying to close their next deal, consider catching them in a couple phishing tests beforehand to drive home how much of a risk they are. As the panelists noted, most of the time the lawyers \u201calready spent more time trying to get out of the training than it would\u2019ve taken to just finish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the paradox: organizations want security, but they don\u2019t want to do<\/em> security. They want secure outcomes without secure behavior. They want magic buttons, not tedious awareness campaigns, or annoying policy enforcements.<\/p>\n

But cybersecurity requires active participation. Preferably before you turn on the monitor and find out it\u2019s an Airbnb for hackers.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glossy press releases never capture the hidden costs of a merger or acquisition. There\u2019s always some eye-popping top-line value number and the audience is left to imagine the toll exacted by integrating accounting systems, aligning org charts, and telling staff that all the corporate swag they got in lieu of bonuses over the years is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}