Data Privacy Breach Lawyers

A privacy breach occurs when personal information is stolen, lost or used or disclosed without authority. The reputational impact and financial cost of a data privacy breach can be devastating: the average cost of a data breach has been estimated at CAD$5.5 million. Roberts & Obradovic Law team of data privacy lawyers provide expert guidance on responding to data breaches and cybersecurity incidents. Our priority is to help clients minimize the reputational and financial damage associated with a data breach and comply with data breach reporting and notification obligations.

If your organization suffered a privacy breach, contact us for a free consultation with one of our team members. We will assist you with taking immediate steps to contain a privacy breach, minimize negative impacts and comply with reporting and notification requirements. 

Even if your organization has never been exposed to a privacy breach, you can be proactive in planning for and responding to them. Our data privacy breach lawyers offer turn-key and customized data breach response plans to help your organization detect data breaches before they occur and take quick, effective action to contain losses when a data breach does occur. Effective data breach response planning can help businesses minimize the duration of data breaches, reduce recovery time, and minimize reputational and financial losses. 

Our clients span a broad range of industries and sectors, including:

Causes of Data Privacy Breaches

Data privacy breaches can occur when you least expect them. There are substantial costs associated with managing a data breach, including financial, regulatory and reputational consequences. High-profile data breaches are subject to increased media attention and regulatory scrutiny, such as Facebook’s data breach involving Cambridge Analytica which resulted in a share price tumble of more than $100 Billion of market cap and the recent Canada’s Privacy Commissioner finding of privacy law violation by Tim Hortons’ app collecting vast amounts of sensitive location data. But even the lesser-known privacy breaches can result in devastating consequences for an organization, causing not only financial damage but loss of consumer trust and reputational harm. 

Most privacy breaches occur due to:

With increasing costs of data breaches, organizations must become proactive in detecting and responding to them. Having robust privacy and data policies in place, training employees on data privacy obligations, and implementing and testing a data breach incident response plan, are just some of the ways that an organization can help mitigate the financial, reputational and costumer damage of a data privacy breach. Other preventative steps organizations can take include adopting a ‘zero trust’ security approach to help prevent unauthorized access to data, using data encryption and mature cloud security practices to protect sensitive data, tools that help protect and monitor remote workers and endpoints the organization doesn’t have physical access to, and security Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation. 

Importance of a Well-Designed Incident Response Plan

A well-designed Data Breach Incident Response Plan can help: 

• Reduce costs associated with incidents, such as regulatory fines, litigation costs, etc.
• Avoid reputational harm associated with data breach incidents
• Reduce and enhance consumer trust 
• Limit loss of sensitive personal information
• Minimize the duration of data breaches, and reduce recovery time

The surest way to find out whether your organization’s Incident Response Plan is effective is to test it on a regular basis by conducting table top exercises and data attack ‘fire drills’. Doing so can help expose vulnerabilities in your organization’s response plan, security defenses and employee preparedness. 

Our data privacy breach lawyers can help you design a comprehensive Incident Response Plan to prepare your organization for a data breach, establish employee’s responsibilities in detecting, responding to and containing a data breach, and clarify reporting and notification obligations. We can also assist you in designing periodic tabletop exercises to test the efficacy of your data response plan, and employee education and training. 

Contact a Data Privacy Breach Lawyer

A data breach can result in devastating financial, reputational and legal consequences. Contact one of our experienced Data Privacy Breach Lawyers or call us at (647) 724-5179 for guidance on preparing for, and responding to data breaches and cybersecurity incidents.