A quarter of all legal firms have been the subject of a cyber-attack and London-based firms have suffered the most with 36 per cent affected and nearly a quarter - 24 per cent - experiencing a fraud-related loss or cyber-attack in the last year. The revelations in the NatWest 2017 Legal benchmark Report  reveal law firms are increasingly targets of cyber crime with an earlier PwC survey  revealing that 73 of the top 100 firms experienced an attack during the financial year 2015-2016 - up from 62 in 2014-15.

New threats

Steven Malone, director of security management at Mimecast said in Infosecurity Magazine: 'The fact that a quarter of law firms have been hit by a cyber-attack or fraud over the last 12 months is bad; but what is worse is that this is only half the story. Our research reveals that 20 per cent of UK organisations have experienced impersonation attacks from their legal departments last year - these involve hackers falsely assuming the identity of high-level people within an organisation. What’s clear is that in addition to traditional threats, businesses must also lookout for these types of attacks as this could affect customers and other key stakeholder without businesses realising until it’s too late.’