Prepare Your Charity Against Cyber Breaches - Cyber and Fraud Centre

Third sector organisations are important for a multitude of reasons. Most notably for how they support the public and the wider society through their hard work and dedication. Third sector organisations include charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups, that primarily deliver essential services, support people’s wellbeing, and contribute to economic growth. They provide knowledge and resources to society, aid those in need, create safe spaces, and help communities grow by communicating on a local level. Unfortunately, the third sector has increasingly become more of a target and taken advantage of by cybercriminals due to the lack of awareness of how quickly the world of cyber is growing.

With well over half of charities dealing with sensitive data according to the National Cyber Security Centre’s survey on the state of cyber security in the U.K.’s charity sector, conducted by Charity Digital, it is of utmost importance that this data is kept as secure as possible, especially with organisations handling data surrounding gender based violence and similar such sensitive human rights issues. However, worryingly findings from the survey state that exactly 50% of charities responded they are likely to experience cyber-attacks. As technology grows, it is difficult to keep up with the evolving processes used for protecting your data. Many know about the simple things like making sure you have a secure password to access your accounts and installing an anti-virus software. This was evident in Charity Digital’s report, as the top answer for ‘which cyber security software was used by their organisation’ was ‘antivirus’. But it’s easy to get lost when trying to implement simple defenses like these and lose focus on what you are defending yourself against. With a mix across all organisations on who is responsible for ensuring data, money and integrity of businesses is protected, third sector organisations look for urgent and crucial support in the field of cyber security. Upon this, the Scottish Business Resilience Centre, in collaboration with the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO), has created, and is currently delivering, a selection of free webinars for third sector organisations to attend and educate themselves in the field of cyber security.

SBRC have been providing cyber resilience trainings to public, private and third sector orgasnisations for many years and have received an overwhelmingly positive response. With the above mentioned series of webinars aimed at going back to basics and how third sector organisations can plan for responses to data breaches, SBRC is calling out to all third sector organisations in Scotland to come forward and prepare their respective organisations against possible cyber breaches.

The webinar ‘Introduction to Cyber Learning’ will dive into the basics and give realistic examples of how third sector organisations can begin to implement simple policies and integrate software that can drastically improve their cyber health. This is recommended to organisations who are not sure where to begin and need a baseline to start their cyber journey. The webinar ‘Introduction to Incident Response’ is slightly more advanced as it explains how organisations can start to implement business continuity and incident response plans to ensure they can continue operations in the event of a data breach or any other unexpected downtime. SBRC recommends organisations begin with the ‘Introduction to Cyber Learning’ webinar then move onto the ‘Introduction to Incident Response’ as the next step.

During these webinars, we also recommend that organisations complete SCVO’s online cyber health check. This survey is a series of questions that will determine how good your organisation’s cyber health is to a large extent. Upon completing this survey, organisations will be invited to a free 1-to-1 consultation service offered by SBRC, hosted by one of their very own ethical hackers. This 1-hour consultation will be tailored to your very own organisation’s needs as our ethical hackers point you in the right direction, as to what action you can take to improve your cyber health. These spaces, however, are limited so organisations are advised to book in soon to ensure a space.