E-mail, Encryption = Security September 16, 2011

Slaw’s post on Are E-Mail’s Days Numbered? links to ABA’s new opinion from the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility on e-mail security. The comment section points to further commentary on the issue from a global perspective from ZixCorp Insight’s 3-part post on the same theme.

The encryption practice is consistent with the recommendation contained in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada publication PIPEDA and Your Practice: A Privacy Handbook for Lawyers that was mentioned in an earlier post.

The same recommendation is made by the International Legal Technical Standards Organization proposed in its 2011 Guidelines for Legal Professionals under cloud transmission (p.18) that “whenever client data is transmitted across the Internet, it must be encrypted at every point.”

Canadian Judicial Council publications of relevance are:

• Blueprint for the Security of Judicial Information
• Ten Things Judges Can Do Now to Improve the Security of Judicial Data
• Wireless Network Security When On the Road