Christopher MacRoberts

Full Profile

Christopher specialises in incident response and provides critical advice as breach and privacy counsel in cyber-related litigation (including subrogated recoveries) and in coverage and monitoring roles. 

He is also an experienced litigator and insurance specialist in financial lines coverage & defence, including for professional service firms, intermediaries, financial institutions and directors & officers.

Christopher is based in the Johannesburg office and is admitted to practice in South Africa. He collaborates on client work with colleagues across sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, the Middle East, Europe and the UK.

He has been ranked by Legal 500 as a recommended lawyer for dispute resolution and is recognised by Best Lawyers and the Lawyer Network as a leading cyber insurance specialist in sub-Saharan Africa.

Experience

Incident response & breach counsel

• Acting as breach counsel and incident response manager in significant multi-jurisdictional cyber-attack and ransomware events affecting clients in the education, healthcare, insurance, investment management, financial services, logistics, manufacturing, mining, retail and security sectors.
• Advising on threat actor engagement and negotiation strategy in cyber extortion and ransomware events
• Advising leading cyber insurers and coverholders on incident response, coverage and pre-incident planning for claims and incident notifications.
• Issuing takedown notifications to file hosting platforms, software providers and owners of AI large-language models following the unauthorised receipt and use of data.

Data protection & privacy

• Advising on legality of ransom negotiations, payment and sanctions protocols in ransomware & cyber extortion incidents.
• Advising on the application of data protection laws and regulatory and law enforcement reporting requirements in multi-jurisdictional data breaches.
• Advising on the development of data protection & privacy laws and regulation in South Africa.
• Delivering regular board and C-suite cyber risk training sessions, tabletop and simulation exercises.

Coverage, monitoring & product development

• Advising insurers as coverage and monitoring counsel for cyber incidents in sub-Saharan Africa, including for listed entities in the retail, manufacturing, healthcare and mining sectors.
• Advising insurers on the development and localisation of cyber policy wordings for use in South Africa.

Litigation & dispute resolution

• Representing insured directors in the successful defence and settlement of shareholder litigation, reckless trading suits and regulatory investigations.
• Representing intermediaries and financial advisors in the successful defence of professional indemnity claims and related investigations.
• Advising and successfully representing insurers in COVID-19 business interruption litigation and arbitration disputes.
• Acting as coverage & monitoring counsel for multiple D&O insurers in respect of ‘State Capture’ related claims in South Africa, including a Judicial Commission of Inquiry and civil and criminal proceedings.
• Acting in a subrogated recovery action for a D&O insurer against a director to claw back defence costs advanced which were ultimately determined not to be covered.