Cybersecurity lawyers need to pay attention to these

A cybersecurity legal practitioner, Mr. Desmond Israel says the cybersecurity lawyer needs legal grounding in certain areas of the law.

According to him, the cybersecurity lawyer needs a good understanding of the Electronics Transaction Act, the Data Protection Act, the Cybersecurity Act, the current Anti-Money Laundering (AML) law, the RTI law, the Payment Systems, and Services Act, and the Copywrite law. 

He pointed out the fact that with the emergence of Fintechs, the expertise of lawyers who have an understanding of these areas comes valuable. 

“A lot of Fintechs are coming up, and most of them, they are high on the league of compliance,” he said when he spoke to students at a seminar by the UPSA School of Law as part of its LSU week celebrations. 

“If you are going to be dealing with your LLB in a year or two, you most likely might get a compliant junior role in a Fintech. Because these are people who are looking for somebody with an understanding of the law, to study the environment and help them in the area of compliance. So they are not necessarily looking for lawyers, they are looking for people with legal understanding.

“The lawyer should be as involved in the company’s operations as the information technology expert deploying new defensive measures in the company’s networks. An effective cybersecurity lawyer has to be in the trenches, helping to develop the statements of work, and you’ve been hearing this term over and over ‘SOU’, a client has actually been sued because he did not go by SOU.”

He also noted that cybersecurity lawyers stand to gain an opportunity in the area of regulatory compliance, litigation and internal practices, and risk-assessment processes.