Information Security and the Expert Witness

One overlooked aspect by many in the expert witness and consulting industry is information security. According to the U.S. government, information security means protecting any material information from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. In the legal world, an attorney's failure to maintain proper information security can result in a lost case, fiduciary liability, and/or disbarment.

For an expert witness or consultant, your consequences may involve liability, being fired by the attorney, and/or destroying your good business name. In order to prevent these consequences from happening, you should safeguard any information obtained from the attorney client privilege, the work product doctrine. For the expert witness or consultant that analyzes medical records they must be careful to adhere to any pertinent Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

A more in depth article on the responsibilities of a consultant with regards to information security will be posted in the next week.


We will be lecturing on Information Security, HIPAA and other related topics at a private conference in San Francisco, CA on March 13-16.

We are Published

Here is the link to the articles published so far. X Pro published us in their UK and US editions, here are the links.

US edition: http://www.xprolegal.com/newsletters/jan09/index.php

UK edition: http://www.xproexperts.co.uk/newsletters/jan09/index.php

The Legal Medical Journal is publishing our article later this month, and our UK blog for them will be starting up in May.

Back from London

We just returned from our trip to London, which was very successful. We met with various solicitors, information security firms and Healthcare organizations to discuss various topics ranging from information security to the use of expert witnesses internationally.

Both our articles on expert witnesses have been published and each Journal has asked us to write a new article specifically on information security and HIPAA. I will post the link to the articles tomorrow.

Additionally, we have been asked to write a continuing blog about Legal Nurses and information security in America, with interactive features where healthcare companies can ask us questions about expert witnesses, HIPAA and legal matters.
We also were able to see a public demonstration while we were there. Protestors against the war in Gaza were marching and chanting about the attacks on Gaza by Isreal.

In London they historically have had 'Legal Observers' that are posted at public demonstrations and take notes and watch to make sure there is no police brutality occuring. We saw some Legal Observers that were watching the police activity in the Square that day.
The police had about fifty police cars and they were surrounding Trafalgar Square. Other police were hidden on side streets in vans, wearing full riot gear. Eventually the police blocked the demonstrations from marching several times, and then the demonstrators got angry. They began to march to the Israeli embassy in an attempt to overthrow it, and the riot police came out to stop them.

Some of them eventually smashed a few windows in some Starbucks up the street from us, although we did not see it happen.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4279688/Starbucks-smashed-and-looted-as-anti-Israel-protests-turn-to-violence.html

Welcome to Jeff and Mandy's Vikings Vault

This is a photo of us at Holborn Chambers in London, where we Interned during the summer of 2006. Vikings Vault is Mandy & Jeff's Information and Security blog. Our goal for this blog is to post tips for our friends and family on ways to protect themselves in the realm of information security.