Cyber Security Among Charities
TLDR
Cyber Security Among Charities
The latest ‘Cyber Security Among Charities’ report was issued in August 2017, and with it has brought a clear indication that charities are under as much threat from cyber-attack as any other business.
The majority of the charities interviewed in the report assume that cyber security is more of an issue for businesses than charities, based on the assumption that cyber attackers are going after those that they would believe to have more cash in the bank. This opinion can be extremely detrimental to charities, as it potentially contributes to making the industry more of a ‘soft target’ for these sorts of attacks.
The following case study demonstrates the consequences of a large charity having their email hacked:
There’s a common misconception that cyber security only requires ‘common sense,’ and is a ‘non-priority’ issue, leading to most organisations not being appropriately prepared when attack happens. It seems that many organisations are unwilling to put the necessary time into a cyber security strategy, with the report uncovering that charities with the most effective cyber security strategies were those that had already suffered an attack, stressing the importance of implementing a successful strategy before it’s too late.
A further risk to charities can be the belief that finances are the only thing cyber attackers are after – the non-personal data the charity holds can be just as important to the day to day running of the organisation, and the detrimental effect that losing these could have should not be underestimated. This includes day to day files and all non-personal data.
Imagine trying to run your charity after all of your files went missing – how many days work would you lose trying to reconfigure all your lost information?
What can we do?
There’s a few straightforward steps your organisation can take initially to protect your information from attack:
- Read our 10 steps to cyber security and use them to review your strategy.
- Keep up to date with the Government’s Cyber Essentials scheme
- Download our cyber security e-book to ensure you’re doing the most that you can for your business
- Read the full Cyber Security Among Charities report for more research and insight.
About the Author
The IT Champion Service Delivery Team works behind the scenes to make sure customers receive dependable, friendly and effective IT support every day.
Their posts share real‑world updates on service performance, improvements and new developments that impact customers directly.
