Dechert LLP

Privacy & Cybersecurity

Partner

Brenda Sharton, partner and co-chair of Dechert’s global privacy & cybersecurity practice, is a top privacy and cybersecurity litigator and one of only 20 lawyers in the country ranked as a "Leading Lawyer" by The Legal 500 for Cyber Law and Data Protection/Breach Response. A first chair trial lawyer, Ms. Sharton counsels and represents public and private corporations and their boards in complex commercial litigation, arbitrations and civil government/regulatory and enforcement matters.

Ms. Sharton is a nationally recognized expert, pioneer and thought leader in the area of privacy and cybersecurity law. She has handled over 500 data breach investigations and cyber-attacks of every type and size for companies in every industry ranging from start-ups to global multi-billion dollar public companies. Ms. Sharton has handled some of the highest-profile data breaches brought by nation states, organized crime and other threat actors, including the negotiation of ransom/ransomware, business email interruption/Office 365 attacks, corporate and nation state espionage, DDoS, insider threats and theft of computer/electronic data of all types. She has defended companies in over 100 privacy-related government investigations and enforcement actions brought by global and U.S. regulators, including state attorneys’ general, the FTC, HHS/OCR for HIPAA breaches, the SEC Cybersecurity Division, among others, as well as defended public and private companies in class action litigation arising from those data breaches.

Ms. Sharton’s experience is second-to-none in handling cyber attacks, including those brought by nation states, organized crime, and threat actors of all types. She has handled hundreds of data breaches, including numerous high profile, front page news breaches. Since COVID-19 has forced a remote work environment, Ms. Sharton has counseled numerous companies on enhanced cyber and physical security related to the exponential increase in cyber attacks related thereto, including companies engaged in COVID-19 research. She counsels companies pre-breach as well as handles all aspects of data breach investigations (crisis management, working with law enforcement and third party forensic firms, crisis and PR firms, as well as board, auditor and investor communications, advice on global notification obligations, and analysis of cyber insurance). She has litigated some of the landmark cases in this space, including one of the first bank online hacking cases to have been litigated to an appeals court. She provides counseling on cyber and physical security programs, in particular for high target companies.

Boston College, B.S., 1987, magna cum laude Boston College Law School, J.D., 1990, summa cum laude, valedictorian, Order of the Coif