Government to Survey Charities about Cyber Security

Charities are to be surveyed about cyber crime by the government over the next three months to help ministers better understand how organisations are tackling online criminals.

The government is to carry out its third survey of charities, business and public sector organisations to better understand the UK’s cyber security labour market.

This will look at how charities and other organisations are approaching the employment and training of cyber security professionals as well as the online threats they face

Charities being asked to take part have been selected at random from charity regulators databases in the UK regions.

Ipsos Mori has been commissioned by the government to carry out telephone surveys from August to October this year. This will be confidential and anonymous and is not technical. The government is keen to speak to charities even if they haven’t had any cyber security employment or training issues.

The previous survey was released in March this year and found that just under half (44%) of charities feel they do not understand their cyber security training needs either ‘very well’ or ‘at all well’.

Cyber security labour market

This survey also revealed a lack of diversity in the cyber security labour market. This found that just 15% of the cyber security sector are female, compared to 28% in the wider digital sector.

This week it emerged that two thirds of charities have seen an increase in cybercrime threats while staff have been working from home amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The biggest concern was ransomware threats, where hackers steal data and demand a ransom.

A number of charities have been impacted by such a ransomware attack on US based cloud computing provider Blackbaud.

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Source: Charity Times