Zachary Elkwood is an Associate in Mullen Coughlin’s Incident Response practice group. As Breach Counsel, he responds to, and investigates, data privacy and security incidents of all sorts including ransomware attacks, business email compromises, vendor breaches and other network intrusions.
Working closely with third-party incident response stakeholders, as well as his clients’ internal incident response team, Zachary assists in determining the nature and scope of the incident and works to ensure that the incident is contained and stopped. Depending on the type of incident, Zachary then advises his clients on their obligations related to state, federal, international and/or industry-related laws and regulations such as law enforcement reporting and incident notification to individuals, business partners and the media. He also facilitates post-incident services for affected parties such as credit and identity monitoring and public relations.
Additionally, Zachary responds to informal and formal regulatory investigative follow-ups following a data privacy and security incident or in connection with a state, federal or industry-specific data privacy or cybersecurity regulation.
Prior to joining Mullen Coughlin, Zachary gained valuable and extensive data privacy and information security compliance as Assistant General Counsel – Compliance and Security for a large, global law firm. There, he coordinated legal responses to data privacy and security incidents on behalf of the firm; drafted regulatory notices; advised on misdirected personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI); trained internal staff on incident response and digital forensic investigations; reviewed and negotiated cybersecurity provisions in firm contracts; and developed guidance on various data privacy laws including the Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act (HIPAA) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as wire fraud, artificial intelligence (AI) and data encryption.
Zachary received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law where he specialized in Data Privacy Law. He was a member of the Urban Law Journal and was the recipient of the “Archibald Murray Public Service Award” – give to a graduating student who devoted at least 100 hours to pro bono work during their law school studies.
He also holds a M.S. in Data Journalism from Columbia University and a B.B.S in Marketing and Media Management from Emory University. He’s licensed to practice in New York and Florida.