What Happened

On July 16, 2020, Save the Children Action Network (SCAN) received notification from Blackbaud, a company that provides software tools and management resources for nonprofits across the world, that they had discovered a cyberattack on one of their systems that houses donor information. Unfortunately, SCAN was one of a number of organizations impacted by this security breach.

We understand from Blackbaud that the incident began in February, when the hacker gained access to Blackbaud’s system, and continued until May 2020, when Blackbaud discovered the breach. At that time, Blackbaud worked with their own security teams, an external forensics firm and federal law enforcement to expel the attacker from their system. However, the hacker was still able to copy data from Blackbaud’s server. Blackbaud subsequently paid a ransom to the hacker to have them delete the data. A detailed explanation of the incident is available on Blackbaud’s website.

What Information Was Involved

Blackbaud’s system housed some of SCAN’s supporter information, including names, contact information, engagement with SCAN, such as giving history, as well as biographical details, such as date of birth and more. However, not all of these details were present in every record. Credit card information and social security numbers were not impacted.

What We Are Doing

SCAN places the highest level of regard on security and protecting our donor information. Since July 16, we have been in almost daily contact with Blackbaud to obtain more information about this incident. Although Blackbaud believes the risk to individuals whose data was stolen is very low, they have put in place dark web monitoring intended to detect trafficking of any of the copied data.

Supporters trust us with their information and we do not take this lightly. We have removed our data off Blackbaud’s servers and we will continue to take steps to protect supporter data – internally and with all of our third-party vendors. SCAN continues to assess this incident and the data involved.

 

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Save the Children Action Network was created in 2014 as the political advocacy arm of Save the Children, to be the political voice for kids. We work to ensure that the issues critical to children’s lives and futures are given top priority by our elected leaders, building bipartisan support to make sure every child has a strong start in life.