Almost every organization we talk to tells us that while the need for greater digital security is clear – one look at the headlines on any given day will tell you that – resources and funding support for such work continue to be scarce.
This is why I and Katie Gillum, co-convener of inroads, the network that fights to reduce abortion stigma, wrote an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review on tackling digital security across civil society. We focus on why and how funders and the broader philanthropy community can get involved.
We write:
Much of this global work has been supported by large foundations and state agencies, but in the United States, the philanthropy community is still catching up to the digital security needs faced by civil society. The result is that, even when an organization readies itself to improve the security of its data infrastructure, it seldom has the resources to do so in any meaningful way.
We suggest four steps civil society organizations and their funders can take to begin addressing this resource gap. They include:
- Commit to digital security as essential to all work
- Take big responsibility for big data.
- Prioritize “capacity building.”
- See the shared threat as a call for interdependence.
You can read the whole article here.
The sophistication and frequency of digital attacks is only going to increase. The philanthropy community can, and must, do more to help organizations improve their understanding and mitigation of online threats.
