What cyber attack in the UK can teach Aussie conveyancing sector

The recent cyber-attack on the UK’s provider of cloud and managed IT services for legal and conveyancing sector, CTS, will have global implications, but most importantly, it offers a valuable lesson for the Australian property conveyancing sector which is served by similar managed legal service providers, according to triSearch Australia’s chief executive, Chris Gibbs.

The cyber criminals targeting the Australian conveyancing sector are attracted not only by its high stakes transactions, involving property and family trust funds, but will also search for lucrative information regarding financially better off individuals, as well as their post codes and information about their properties and mortgages.

This means that solutions will need to better protect the interests of all parties involved, including conveyancers, lawyers, homeowners and buyers.

The UK’s incident, which brought property sales to a standstill for up to 200 real estate agencies even though there was no evidence that clients’ personal data has been compromised, also proved that early detection of potential breaches was crucial.

triSearch chief executive, Chris Gibbs, whose firm offers cloud-based practice management solution built for conveyancers and provides access to software, search and conveyancing tools platform, said that the increase in sophistication and scale of cyber-attacks had demonstrated that a prevention only response was no longer enough and businesses should assume that cyber attacks would be happening and focus on early detection and response planning.

CTS, which has two offices in the UK (London and Cheshire) and one in New Zealand, has confirmed on its website it is experiencing “a service outage which has impacted a portion of the services” caused by cyber attack.

“The outage was caused by a cyber-incident. We are working closely with a leading global cyber forensics firm to help us with an urgent investigation into the incident and to assist us in service restoration,” the firm said further in its announcement.

“We continue to work around the clock with the assistance of third-party experts. Whilst we are confident that we will be able to restore services, we are unable to give a precise timeline for full restoration.”

CTS defines its business as being an IT partner ‘uniquely dedicated’ to the legal sector and offers strategic consultancy, cloud platforms, cyber protection and managed services.