Insider Trading Goes Cyber

The old paradigm involving real insiders, or their lawyers and accountants, is yesterday’s news. Technically proficient operators are now getting inside information by hacking. One of the largest of such attacks hit the Security and Exchange Commission itself in September (whether tradable information has been accessed was not immediately clear), but other “gatekeepers” of insider information are ripe targets, according to this overview from the Dark Reading website. Gatekeepers are defined as “entities storing material non-public information for a number of publicly traded companies,” and that would include law firms, raising some major liability issues.