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One consistent message that seems to resonate from legislature to legislature across the world is the recognition of the fact that data - especially personal data - is both a weapon and a vulnerability, and in the quickly-evolving digital landscape of today the task of safeguarding it effectively becomes more and more difficult. The Australian legislature seeks to update its current privacy laws, which are based on both the original 1988 Privacy Act, and its later update from 2000, to reflect the rapid technological advancements that took place in the early 21st century in data collection, data storage and data analysis.

October is the 18th Annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the United States. It is sponsored by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Cyber Security Alliance. This year’s theme is “Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart.” Being Cyber Smart includes awareness of current threats like business email compromise (BEC), phishing, ransomware, and supply chain compromise.

2021 has been a record year for legal tech: $1.4 billion was invested by venture capital firms in the first half of the year, which is more than in the entirety of 2020, and well above what was raised in 2018 and 2019. Leading the investment boom are startups like RocketLawyer (which provides legal services to individuals and small businesses), Verbit (voice transcription for the legal sector), Notarize (digital notarization), and Clio (cloud based CRM).

The concept of infusing Artificial Intelligence into legal technology solutions started at the onset of the digital age, around the time when smartphones became widely available and AI began to be practically applied to optimize user experiences based on prior user behavior. Brands that rushed to develop and incorporate AI into their products and services included global flagship companies such as Amazon (Alexa), Apple (Siri), and subscription-based organizations, Netflix and Spotify, that began to feature the ability to provide AI-based recommendations to users.

Many legal professionals are proficiently familiar with the discovery portion of matters since this work, which involves collecting and managing hundreds of gigabytes, sometimes terabytes, of data, can be quite arduous and require tight collaborative support from highly organized eDiscovery specialists. In comparison, however, the equally critical process of preparing for trial that lawyers manage upon filing a case is not as universally known to the eDiscovery community since these tasks and workflows are typically administered and overseen by different legal case teams.

Global technology competition has grown fierce recently requiring nations to consider and enact technology protection policies and strategies. In Japan, for example, there was a significant change in 2014 under the Liberal Democratic Party that led to the development and passage of the Economic Security Promotion Act in 2022, along with a new National Security Strategy.

Messaging apps have become a ubiquitous form of communication, with billions of users worldwide. They have changed the way we communicate and share information with others in our personal lives and business, such that employees now routinely use messaging apps to conduct business. As the use of messaging apps has grown, so too has the need to collect data from these apps in a forensically sound manner from corporate-managed systems, as well as mobile devices for legal or investigatory reasons.