Shauna Dillavou is the co-founder of Brightlin.es, a security firm working with the nonprofit sector to prevent vulnerabilities.
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Anti-Doxxing and Nonprofit Staff Safety with Shauna Dillavou
We know nonprofits are facing challenges in a challenging time. At Community IT, when we think about and enact cybersecurity for our clients in the nonprofit sector, we generally are focused on protecting the organization, its data, its systems, and its finances from bad actors. Those hackers are overwhelmingly interested in financial benefits: getting you to wire the money to their bank account instead of your real bank account. While some cyber criminals are interested in gaining insights into your advocacy area or your networks, a majority of cyber crimes against nonprofits are purely financial.
But what happens when your nonprofit is involved in an advocacy area, a country, or an issue that has suddenly become controversial? Media attention turns to your spokespeople, your staff, your board, and your volunteers – anyone who has been associated with your organization’s issue. Particularly online. It isn’t long before that online attention can become threats against your personnel.
“Doxxing” is a term for when an opponent releases personally identifiable information about you – your home address, phone number, your parents, your kids’ personal information. People can then start calling you because they disagree with something you said that has been promoted online with your phone number and personal details. Doxxing is meant to inspire terror and to shut you up. And sometimes the online rancor, coupled with personal information, can lead unhinged individuals to go beyond harassment to act on these online threats.
In this interview, Carolyn talks with Shauna Dillavou, co-founder of Brightlin.es, a security company that works in the nonprofit sector to prevent personal vulnerabilities for staff who may be in the online media spotlight.
With decades of experience in the intelligence community, Shauna co-founded Brightlines to provide resources to nonprofits, foundations, and others who face threats and escalation against their staff or spokespeople.
In this podcast on anti-doxxing and nonprofit staff safety, learn the types of personal threats that are becoming more common, and the steps you should take to protect your vulnerable staff.
Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic and our podcasts and webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Podcasts are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community. Brightlines is one of many services that exist to improve the security of your staff, executives, and board members. This interview with Shauna Dillavou explores the parameters of the problem and gives general advice on steps to take if you or your staff are threatened online.
Presenters
Shauna Dillavou is a seasoned intelligence analyst with decades of experience working for the US government. She formerly was part of a team locating cartel associates by their online traces, and founded Brightlines to reverse-engineer that experience to protect vulnerable staff from online doxxing and threats to their personal safety. Unfortunately in recent years the threats against nonprofit staff have grown, making this service necessary and timely.
Carolyn Woodard is currently head of Marketing and Outreach at Community IT Innovators. She has served many roles at Community IT, from client to project manager to marketing. With over twenty years of experience in the nonprofit world, including as a nonprofit technology project manager and Director of IT at both large and small organizations, Carolyn knows the frustrations and delights of working with technology professionals, accidental techies, executives, and staff to deliver your organization’s mission and keep your IT infrastructure operating. She has a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Johns Hopkins University and received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Williams College.
She learned a lot about anti-doxxing and nonprofit staff safety from interviewing Shauna Dillavou for this podcast.
Ready to get strategic about your IT?
Community IT has been serving nonprofits exclusively for twenty years. We offer Managed IT support services for nonprofits that want to outsource all or part of their IT support and hosted services. For a fixed monthly fee, we provide unlimited remote and on-site help desk support, proactive network management, and ongoing IT planning from a dedicated team of experts in nonprofit-focused IT. And our clients benefit from our IT Business Managers team who will work with you to plan your IT investments and technology roadmap if you don’t have an in-house IT Director.
We constantly research and evaluate new technology to ensure that you get cutting-edge solutions that are tailored to your organization, using standard industry tech tools that don’t lock you into a single vendor or consultant. And we don’t treat any aspect of nonprofit IT as if it is too complicated for you to understand. When you are worried about your email safety and phishing attempts, you shouldn’t have to worry about understanding your provider.
We think your IT vendor should be able to explain everything without jargon or lingo. If you can’t understand your IT management strategy to your own satisfaction, keep asking your questions until you find an outsourced IT provider who will partner with you for well-managed IT.
If you’re ready to gain peace of mind about your IT support, let’s talk.
Transcript coming soon!
Photo by Arleen wiese on Unsplash