Joel Durston

Associate, Kennedys

Joel Durston is an Associate in Kennedys Cyber and Data team.

Joel has a wealth of experience in supporting clients of all sizes deal with a variety of cyber and data matters, spanning from providing legal and regulatory guidance where an organisation has been the victim of a ransomware attack, to providing ad hoc privacy guidance on a range of topics.   

In particular Joel takes pride in understanding his client’s values and culture in order to provide a commercial approach to responding to incidents. Enabling clients to navigate difficult cyber incidents with minimal disruption, to help control the narrative around incidents and fully understand their obligations both in the UK and internationally.

Prior to working in the cyber sector Joel built up a number of years’ experience in insurance and commercial litigation, including working on a number of high value and high profile claims.

Particular examples of Joel’s experience include:

• Providing breach response support following a ransomware attack on Customer Relationship Manager, processing data on behalf of hundreds of international organisations and millions of data subjects.
• Acting as breach counsel for a large retailer, whose systems were compromised, impacting data for data subjects for over 140 different countries.
• Provided regulatory and legal support to a well know organisation following discovery of successive data incidents.
• Provided advice and guidance to a number of UK law firms following a ransomware incident to a major IT service provider, causing significant operational difficulties to may across the legal sector.
• Successfully defended 100+ data claims stemming from a single data incident.
• Provided legal advice and guidance to an organisation who had a £6 million payment diverted following a business mailbox compromise.