Technology

How to protect churches from threats and cybersecurity attacks

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Your church may not be a high profile church like the Vatican, but that doesn’t mean your church has no value. The threat of cybersecurity for your church is real, and you need to do what you can to protect your data and collection plates in your church.

Church people are not always known as the most intelligent person in technology. How many times have you seen the Imam or Dean of your parish struggle with basic technology?

There are a number of simple things that church leaders can do to improve security in the church. Read on, find what it is.

1. Know the general threat to your Church
You must know what the threat of the main cybersecurity for your church before you can succeed in preventing it. There are thousands of ways a hacker can attack your system, and they are all under the main categories.

Phishing is a way for scammers to throw a wide net and try fishing for people who don’t suspect to give money or click on the link. This can be an email disguised as an original email.

Malware is a type of software program installed on one computer on your network. This is installed when the file is downloaded or the link is clicked. After the program is active, it can do almost everything. It can collect data from your database, turn off your entire system, or launch an email campaign targeted for your parish.

Ransomware is a type of malware that locks your network. Your most important data is held for ransom, which can be destroyed unless you pay a ransom.

2. Educating the parish
One common threat used by hackers is they will cheat your staff’s email address and send an email to your parishes. These emails usually contain money requests.

Instead of going to church, the funds go into the hacking bank account. You need to collect funds and make your parishes know your fundraising activities.

You also have to have a system for your parish people to contribute online. The system will function as a single place for online donations.

This will help your parishes recognize anything unusual with your system.

You also need to make your parishes realize your system. For example, you shouldn’t make personal asking for money via email. If a parish receives a message like that, then they will soon know that it is a fraud.

3. Educating staff
Email is a method used by hackers to access the church system. Click the link can turn into a ransomware or data violation attack.

You must notify the staff that they should not click on the link in the email, even if they look like a legitimate email.

Staff and volunteers you need to know what common cybersecurity threats and how they can identify them.

They must operate as if all emails are threats. If they are unsure about certain emails, they must delete them.

4. Maintain a strong password
On this day and age cyberthreals, people still use weak passwords that can crack in seconds. You are not the only person who uses “12345” as a password.

This is actually the most common password. It might be easy to remember, but it will create serious vulnerabilities in your church.

There should be a password policy that requires everyone to use a powerful password and they must be changed every 90 days.

If you need to remember a powerful password, use a program like LastPass or save your password list where no one can access it.

5. Get insurance
IT professionals tend to treat cyberatck as a problem when, it’s not a problem if. You have to treat them in the same way.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use this method to prevent attacks. You must have your closed base if there is cyberatack.

There are church insurance companies that provide cyber insurance. This type of insurance can help protect your church from losses supported in cyberattack.

Zayd Dana
the authorZayd Dana