Eleanor Vaida Gerhards will speak on a session titled “Safeguarding the System – Cybersecurity Challenges and Opportunities for Franchise Networks” at the 49th Annual Forum on Franchising, presented by the American Bar Association, in Toronto, Canada. Franchise networks face outsized cybersecurity risk: a single weak link with a franchisee, franchisor, or vendor can ripple systemwide, triggering regulatory scrutiny, statutory breach-notice obligations, class actions, contract claims, and brand damage. This session gives franchise counsel practical tools to prevent incidents, manage them in real time, and position the system for effective resolution and recovery. The session will translate evolving cybersecurity obligations into action. Using hypotheticals, attendees will explore allocation of responsibility, flow-down standards, and vendor oversight. The session will also consider incident escalation, statutory breach-notice mapping, vicarious liability, joint-defense, and privilege considerations.

Attendees will review model contractual provisions and incident-response checklists, and map insurance (cyber, tech E&O, crime, D&O) to contractual risk allocation and exclusions. The speakers will focus on both short-term crisis response, including immediate post-incident steps, coordination with internal teams and third-party experts, and insurer engagement, as well as longer-term strategies for managing claims and regulatory investigations (including AGs and the FTC). These longer-term considerations include evidence preservation, litigation holds, and the role arbitration and forum-selection clauses may play in shaping post-incident outcomes. Finally, the session concludes with practical guidance on operationalizing cybersecurity standards through training, third-party risk management, and measurable system-wide controls.