Data Security

Strapped for time and resources, nonprofits often need vendors to get things done. But just because you outsource projects, it doesn’t mean your data is safe from cybersecurity threats. In part one of this series, “Employ These Corporate Cyber Security Safeguards Now," we examined critical initiatives you can employ to help protect your constituent data internally...

Nonprofits aren’t immune. In fact, nonprofit organizations may be prime cyber-attack targets. Most collect and store sensitive data like emails, social security numbers, billing information and more. Despite this, nonprofits are often hesitant to make cybersecurity a priority due to the investment of time and resources...

Nearly half of all U.S. companies experienced two or more cyberattacks, many of which focused on identity theft. Following such a breach, cybercriminals test the stolen credit card data to validate the information in a process called credit card number testing that is dramatically on the rise...

There is a lot of talk these days about fake news. Fake news is intentional misinformation. Falsehoods. I recall getting an email from a friend during the 2008 presidential election. The information presented was shocking, but appeared to be from a “reliable” news source. I spent 15 minutes on Google and found that the information was completely false...

When Edward Snowden leaked the biggest collection of classified National Security Agency documents in history, he wasn’t just revealing the inner workings of a global surveil­lance machine. He was also scrambling to evade it. To com­municate with the journalists who would publish his secrets, he had to route all his messages over the anonymity soft­ware Tor,…

The sudden exposure of the Clinton campaign email cache is perhaps the ultimate evidence that we’ve all overcommitted to email—we’ve put too much in it, expected too much from it, and now, finally, we’re seeing the spectacular signs of its impending destruction. Email is simply not up to the rigors of modern political and business…

For nonprofit organizations, finding high-quality, low-cost IT resources can be a challenge. You may not have the budget, or the in-house with a deep enough background in technology to know what the best decisions are. This is especially true when it comes to data protection. Your donors are your greatest asset, and the last thing they want is to have to worry about whether or not you are preventing their personal information from being stolen...

Leaked Democratic Party email exposed a simple fact: People gossip. But in today’s cybersecurity environment, leaders would do well to recognize that a bigger crowd can listen. At this point, you may be so tired of hearing about email that you’ve decided to stop using it—instead, you've thought about using smoke signals, telegraphs, semaphore flags,…

Regardless of size or resources, nonprofits must keep cybersecurity top of mind. The assumption may be that a relatively small public image and a lack of disposable assets would make nonprofits less appealing to hackers than most corporations. However, every business and organization is a potential target, according to Ann Puckett, information technology manager for…

Strong passwords are a critical first line of defense against would-be data thieves: One bad password from one staffer in your organization is all it takes to open the door to hackers. Yet, by and large, we're still pretty bad at the whole thing. Just take a look at this list of the 25 most popular passwords of 2015, from security-services firm SplashData. Brace yourselves...