Appeals from bankruptcy court orders continue to play a key role in bankruptcy practice. The relevant sections of the Judicial Code and the Federal Bankruptcy Rules arguably cover all the relevant issues in a straightforward manner. Recent cases, however, show that neither Congress nor the Rules Committees could ever address the myriad issues raised by imaginative lawyers. The appellate courts continue to wrestle with standing, jurisdiction, mootness, excusable neglect, and finality, among other things. The following overview, in a series of installments, shows what the courts have been addressing during just the past three years. In this article, Michael Cook covers appellate standing and the implications to bankruptcy practices.

In 2021, private fund managers faced a persistent wave of cyberattacks with potential to inflict devastating harm. In a ransomware attack—the fastest-growing type of cyberattack—perpetrators threaten to take action that would result in a wholesale inability to access critical systems if the ransom is not paid.

Cyberattacks continue to grow in frequency and scope, as new reports claim that the group responsible for the SolarWinds attack targeted more than 600 organizations with nearly 23,000 attacks in its latest campaign.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has been increasingly aggressive in enforcing requirements for managers to maintain reasonable cybersecurity policies.

While many fund managers have stepped up their cybersecurity programs, cybercriminals continue to develop new ways to circumvent security measures. As fiduciaries that hold sensitive financial information, fund managers should be periodically evaluating and testing their preparedness for a cyber event.

The foundation of an effective cybersecurity breach response is the development and maintenance of an incident response plan. An IRP can be included as part of, or attached to, the firm’s information security policy. By establishing policies and identifying resources for responding to a cyberattack before it happens, an IRP frees up resources to focus on assessing the nature of the specific attack at hand and taking measures to remediate and contain it.