Privacy and Data Security

Cyber Incident Response and Data Breaches
Cyberattacks and other types of data breaches are becoming increasingly common and can be devastating for businesses. They present a minefield of technical, legal, and public relations challenges. We have extensive experience in investigating network intrusions, hacking, cyber extortion, and other types of data breaches. We help clients coordinate with regulatory authorities, meet public disclosure requirements, evaluate remedial measures, and defend against civil litigation or government enforcement actions.

Cybersecurity Assessments and Incident Response Planning
Our experience in advising clients in the wake of cyberattacks gives us key insights in advising clients on how to mitigate cyber risks. Our team is skilled in its ability to understand our client’s unique business needs and to work with their IT and security professionals to assess their legal obligations and help guide their decision-making in assessing, seeking to prevent, and preparing for cyberattacks. We specialize in working with cybersecurity vendors, digital forensic experts, and penetration testers to help draft and test defensible security plans.

Board Advisory
In the wake of data breaches, regulators, litigants, and shareholders are increasingly asking, “Where was the board of directors?” Few boards of directors have the skills or experience to provide the necessary oversight for cyber risk issues. Our team is uniquely positioned to advise boards of directors on how to structure cybersecurity governance and how to fulfill their cybersecurity oversight obligations.

Insider Threats
Though headlines tend to focus our attention on data breaches caused by outside hackers, the majority of data breaches and intellectual property thefts are actually caused by insiders—employees, contractors, or customers who abuse their legitimate access to sensitive data. Our team is skilled in helping clients prepare for, investigate, and respond to insider incidents.

Privacy Compliance Counseling
Privacy regulations in the U.S., Europe, and all over the world are rapidly changing. Our team is expert in advising companies dealing with privacy laws, including HIPAA, data breach notification statutes, and the European Union’s GDPR. We are skilled at asking the right questions, mapping and understanding the flow of sensitive data through an organization, spotting compliance issues, and drafting policies and recommended practices to safeguard data. We help clients develop training programs and website privacy policies, and represent clients when they face issues involving global compliance, cross-border data transfers, and compliance audits.

Digital Data and Litigation
Litigation today inevitably raises complicated issues relating to digital data. In addition to the now routine issues around electronic discovery, litigants grapple with problems concerning, for example, rights to data stored in other countries, data in the cloud, or data accessed by third parties. This, in turn, can create extremely complicated conflicts of laws, pitting one country’s data protection regime against another country’s discovery requirements. Our deep knowledge of the relevant technical issues, combined with our legal skills, allow us to help clients navigating issues such as these at the intersection of law and technology.

Our Team
Our interdisciplinary Privacy and Data Security team has years of experience providing counsel, regulatory advice, and litigation services to businesses and institutions, and includes a Certified Information Privacy Professional (“CIPP”), the preeminent credential in the field.

We have the knowledge and experience to help businesses understand and comply with the evolving laws and standards that regulate the collection, use, sharing, and protection of personal data. In addition, we stay abreast of the latest developments in the industry by participating in organizations such as the International Association of Privacy Professionals (“IAPP”).

The interdisciplinary nature of our team—comprised of transactional and litigation attorneys—makes Nutter adept at counseling clients across a broad range of industries on compliance with, and defending against, alleged violations of privacy and data security laws.