For some, the digitisation of the humanitarian sphere is a crisis. For others, it’s a door to a world of unforeseen opportunities. Whatever way you look at it, digitisation has the potential to present real risks to NGOs and their staff.

After dozens of NGOs were hit by a hack on a large US fundraising database in July, the message has been clear; don’t wait until an incident happens to improve your digital security.

While the scope of security risk management continues to grow, encompassing safeguarding, wellbeing and many more non-traditional components, it’s understandable that those in security roles might prefer to leave digital security to their IT colleagues.

As ACT Alliance’s Global Security Advisor, James Davis, explains, with such complex security and reputational threats at play in the digital sphere, security risk managers cannot afford to put these issues on the side-lines.

‘All of us… who have anything to do with risk… really need to start looking at, not so much the technical detail around digital risk, but what are the implications of this massive digital footprint we have?’

In this episode, we explore some of the digital risks that NGOs and their staff face in the modern world, and how and why security risk managers might begin to tackle them.