Insider Trading Cases Based on Law Firm Data Put Spotlight on Cybersecurity

Insider trading case exposes gaps in law firm security

In the days of banker boxes full of documents, locked conference rooms kept files secure, and law firms trusted their partners to uphold their ethical duties to clients. Law firms have invested heavily in security in recent years, in part out of fears of cyberattacks.

That doesn’t always help, however, when the threat comes from inside.

“The reality is you cannot really eliminate insider risk or access to sensitive data,” said Avi Sambira, a director at cybersecurity firm Sygnia.

While a stray document on a printer or overheard watercooler chatter can always be a risk, the biggest internal vulnerability these days stems from who has permission to access internal documents housed on law firm servers.

Cybersecurity professionals and lawyers I spoke to said law firms have grown more sophisticated over the last decade in how they restrict such data, often granting permission matter-by-matter rather than more broadly to everyone who shares a client or practice group.

“Firms having access to something doesn’t mean everyone should have access equally,” said Devon Ackerman, an executive at cybersecurity firm LevelBlue. Instead, he said, permissions should be granted on a “need-to-know” basis.

SEC Audit Oversight Push Renews Questions for Enron-Era Watchdog

The SEC’s plan to dedicate more staff to investigate audit lapses has triggered fresh uncertainty over the role of the industry’s embattled watchdog.

Through a series of job postings and a few public statements, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has promised to create a specialized unit to put extra power behind its auditor oversight, targeting what one official described as “fundamental” failures.

Investor advocates said they fear the move could hollow out the enforcement capabilities of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which Congress stood up to ensure investors could rely on corporate financial reporting after the collapse of Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. in the early 2000s.

Accountants’ defense lawyers, meanwhile, are watching for clues about the full scope of the specialty unit’s work and what new risks the shifting accountability landscape might introduce for auditors.

12 Reasons Why President Trump Will Fire SEC Chairman Paul Atkins by Year-End (With Receipts)

Paul Atkins is not surviving the year as Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He will be gone, gone, gone.

That’s not some random hot take. It’s the thesis of an exhaustive, 74-page, 40,000-word, long-form, meticulously footnoted forensic dosier I’m publishing today entitled:

“12 Reasons Why President Trump Will Fire SEC Chairman Paul Atkins by Year-End (With Receipts)”

Every factual claim is hyperlinked to a primary source (over 1,100 hyperlinks), painstakingly assembled from Federal Register filings, federal court dockets, U.S. Treasury correspondence, FBI cyber alerts, Financial Stability Board reports, on-chain Tron forensics, GAO findings, four ranking-member document demands sitting in Atkins’s inbox, the fine print of the very enforcement settlements Atkins himself has authorized and a broad range of other devastating sources.

The receipts are public and in plain view. The timeline is short. The only question is which Friday.

Rep. Ashley Hinson Pushes Prediction Market Ban for US House Members, Staff

Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) introduced a resolution Thursday that would amend the House rules to ban members and their staff from trading on prediction markets.

“No Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House of Representatives” may engage in purchasing or selling on prediction markets, the resolution says, referring to agreements or contracts that are dependent on the occurrence of specific events.

Hinson’s proposal mirrors one approved by unanimous consent in the Senate last week, in which senators agreed to amend the chamber’s standing rules to ban senators and staff from engaging in prediction markets. It also has similar language to an amendment that was added to the Senate resolution making clear it does not apply to insurance.

The NFT market was ‘oversold’ and prices fell too far, says Yuga Labs’ new CEO

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) non-fungible tokens are surging again, fueling hopes of a broader revival in the battered NFT market as speculative appetite returns across crypto.

Floor prices, or the lowest value for the flagship Yuga Labs collection, have climbed from around 5 ETH to 10 ETH over the past month, while apecoin (APE), the ecosystem’s governance token, has also rallied from below $0.10 to about $0.16 with a sharp increase in trading volumes.