The “hacker” is generally considered the perpetual enemy of law firms and corporate legal departments, posing a pervasive and ever-evolving threat to client and corporate data. In some cases, however, attorneys may need to become the hacker they so despise. California technology attorney Ira Rothken describes this as a process of “ethical hacking.”“Ethical hacking, by its nature, is data recovery and penetration testing with authorization,” Rothken explained. “Typically, this means clients have to give their permission, but can also include instances where individual account owners are unreachable or software has changed substantially.”