International Arbitration Community Turns Its Focus To Cybersecurity

International arbitration has long offered participants the benefit of maintaining confidentiality in high-stakes cases. Like virtually all modern activity, however, it has become potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks. The threat extends not only to the information of the disputing parties and their counsel, but also to the internal deliberations and draft decisions of the arbitrators themselves, which can be highly sensitive. Combined with reports of breaches in other contexts, this underscores the importance of maintaining the security of the information exchanged in the course of an arbitration, and communications among arbitrators and with arbitral institutions. As a result, the international arbitration community has been increasingly focused on the security of the information exchanged during the arbitral process.