# Volunteer professionals to help charities with their online security

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2014/10/21/volunteer-security-professionals-help-charities-online-security/
- Published: 2014-10-21T09:03:55+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Give A Day is a new initiative that encourages digital security staff to volunteer
their time to help charities develop and preserve their online security. As the 
name suggest, the campaign invites these skilled staff to donate just one day of
their time.

As they point out, charities hold data on three out of four Britons, so the scale
of the challenge of protecting all this data is considerable.

Give A Day has already secured support from commercial online security specialists
and companies, including people working at Badenoch & Clark, HMRC and Aviva. Andrzej
Kawalec, CTO at HP Security, sent a message of support for the platform’s launch
event:

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Amar Singh, Founder and CEO, said:

> “Almost every charity is custodian of extremely sensitive personal information
> ranging from sex abuse and child abuse to health issues like cancer, mental illness
> and diabetes.
> “The problem is, in cyberspace, most, if not all charities have this immensely
> personal and sensitive information exposed and often inadequately protected, making
> them an easy target for the cyber attacker”.

He cited the example of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), “where an
opportunist attacker stole sensitive information about couples and their pregnancy
issues”.

Singh added:

> “The charity did not even know they had all this personal information and were
> fined £250,000 by the ICO”.

Although still in beta, [Give A Day](http://www.giveaday.co.uk/) is already inviting
registrations and enquiries from digital security staff, charities and potential
corporate supporters.

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