TruShield released its 2015 Annual Cyber Threat Intelligence Report, and the outlook: 2016 will see even more ransomware and phishing attacks than last year. And guess who is facing the biggest threat? Law firms. Paul Caiazzo, principal, chief security architect for TruShield says, “The attackers know law firms process highly sensitive information for their clients, and a lot of the time… attackers also know that law firms and the legal industry in general lacks standardization on security program structures, controls, and oversight. This divergence can result in security weaknesses.” The report also predicts that email will be the most vulnerable access point for hackers and that mid-sized law firms (between 50-150 attorneys) will be the most targeted. How will the hackers target these firms? Through the firms’ employees. Anyone with a public profile could fall victim to a phishing attack. For law firms this year, TruShield advises frequent (and thus early) detection of any threats to their information technology systems.

What else does TruShield’s report tell us? Well, last year, most of the cyber-attacks were initiated in China and Russia, but in the U.S. the source of cyber-attacks came most frequently from California, Michigan, Kansas and Washington state. And the report predicts that cyber-crime will grow by 15-40% in 2016, along with a jump in cybercrime-as-a-service attacks (i.e. a hacker enters a backdoor on a victim’s computer or device and downloads malware, ransomware or other malicious software to the device or network enabling the hacker to resell the victim to another data harvester).

Check out the full report and start updating your security systems right away.