Posts with the tag
“Digital threats”

We represent organisations deeply committed to the public good. Whether addressing humanitarian crises, ensuring access to clean water, combating hunger, providing healthcare in remote areas, fighting violence against women, or combating child sexual abuse and human trafficking, we all face a common threat.

Today, we unite in a collective call to action, urging governments, corporations, philanthropies, and other benefactors to take decisive steps in safeguarding the cybersecurity of the valiant organisations that tirelessly combat the societal challenges we face.

In recent years, the digitisation of our activities has accelerated exponentially. Our organisations, employees, and volunteers are now part of an increasingly complex digital landscape. While this digitisation has significantly enhanced our ability to scale and deploy our missions rapidly, it has also exposed us to a myriad of cyber threats.

The digital domain now also serves as a battleground where our organisations, staff, and those we serve are targeted relentlessly. Whether it is data theft, reputational and credibility damage through disinformation, brutal ransomware attacks on our systems, or attempts to deploy spyware in our infrastructures, we face the most serious threats.

In an environment where resources are stretched and where we want those resources to be focused on the missions we are delivering, it is extremely challenging to keep pace with the evolving cybersecurity landscape. We lack the resources and expertise to undertake the state-of- the-art cybersecurity measures that our mission requires, and even completing basic steps can be challenging in many organisations.

This situation must change. Non-profit organisations stand on the frontlines, offering aid and support to the most vulnerable, yet they face an ever-growing barrage of cyber threats that could undermine their noble missions.

We call for the following measures to bolster the cybersecurity posture of civil society organisations:

• Access to sustainable funding, through the establishment of a specialised fund, designed to improve the accessibility of cybersecurity tools, services, and platforms that meet our needs, without compromising our operational capacity or our ability to finance our missions.
• An unwavering commitment from states, coupled with the expertise of cybersecurity experts, to identify and relentlessly pursue malicious actors that target our operations.
• A public commitment from nation-states to not attack our organisations, including but not limited to, disseminating disinformation about and leveraging spyware against them.
• Comprehensive public documentation on the human, societal, and environmental impacts of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against our organisations fostering a culture of transparency and accountability in cyberspace.
• Formal recognition of the civil society sector as a global critical infrastructure providing essential support worldwide.

Together, we can create a safer digital environment for those who strive to make our world a better place.