Watch Out for This Fake State Bar Email Scam

If you receive an email from a “Jacqui Salmon” purporting to be from the NC State Bar that requests information from you, delete it immediately.

There is no such employee at the State Bar, and you’re being phished.

On June 7, the State Bar placed the following warning on its website:

We are aware of a spam email circulating from a supposed State Bar employee Jacqui Salmon requesting information on behalf of the NC State Bar.  This person does not exist, and the phone number is bogus.  We ask that you please refrain from calling the NC State Bar and please delete or mark this email as spam.  As a further measure, you can request your IT department to block this email address.

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Incident Response Toolkit

Lawyers Mutual has a free Data Breach / Incident Response Plan Toolkit on its website. You can use it as a template for creating an Incident Response Plan for your firm. Following are some excerpts:

“Our incident response plan has been developed to reduce the exposures to our organization, our customers/ employees, and our partners that arise out of a data theft or data loss incident,” says the toolkit’s introduction. “We have an affirmative duty to protect our customer information and to properly respond to an incident that is both part of our Security Plan and that is required by law.”

The toolkit contains policies and forms to help your firm:

• Assess the nature and scope of an incident and identify what customer information systems and types of customer/employee information have been accessed or misused.
• Contain and control the incident to prevent further unauthorized access to, or misuse of, customer information, while preserving records and other evidence.
• Notify appropriate law enforcement agency.
• Maintain or Restore Business Continuity.
• Notify customers/employees when warranted. This plan further outlines procedures that we will implement and/or consider in the event an incident occurs. All staff is required to be familiar with this plan and supervisors have been instructed to share this plan with their staff.

What is an “Incident?”

According to the toolkit: “Any perceived, actual, or successful attempt to gain unauthorized access to or use of customer/employee information that could result in substantial harm or serious inconvenience to a customer. (Incidents may arise out of or include breach of data confidentiality, stolen computer, laptop, PDA, or storage device, data modification / destruction, unauthorized use of data, computers or changes to computers and any attempts of the above, a computer virus, computer spyware, burglary, pre-text calls, and more. Incidents may also be detected based on anomalies in information, unusual behavior by customers or staff, and notification by a customer, vendor, or law enforcement, etc.).”

What To Do

“In the event an incident is suspected, is actually occurring, or has actually occurred, it is our policy to have the staff member that becomes aware of the circumstance to report the event as an incident to their immediate supervisor. In the event a staff member is unable to communicate with their supervisor, contact is to be escalated to any one of the Incident Response Team Members, as identified in the Incident Response Contact Sheet.”

See the Lawyers Mutual Data Breach Toolkit for more information.

Sources: Spam Email Alert | North Carolina State Bar (ncbar.gov)

Data_Breach_Toolkit.pdf (nmcdn.io)

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