The Ethics behind safeguarding tech

 

Embedding digital ethics in your workforce

 

Making sure that digital ethics are part of your team’s core thinking helps prevents data breaches. Embedding charity digital ethics across the organisation can ensure that staff remain vigilant.

 

Employees should be aware of what can happen when tech for good goes bad. They key issues we’ve identified are:

 

• Regulation – The law says that charities must ensure that procedures are in place to shield sensitive personal data. Leaders have a duty to implement these procedures.
• Charity ethics – Charities have a special public duty to uphold trust. Implementing and following the Charity Code of Digital Practice can help maintain that bond with the public.
• Social media – Charity digital leaders should be wary of the dangers of social media. Online bullying and spending too much time online have been highlighted as some of the negative impacts.
• Fact checking – Fake news and misinformation is everywhere on the internet. Fact checking content can prevent charities from spreading the wrong message.

 

By embedding digital ethics as part of your culture, tech for good causes can stay good.

 

 

How charities are staying safe

 

Charities are doing ground-breaking work to support people in need. In the mental health sector, the scale of the problem is huge – using tech for good means that more people can be helped at scale, but this needs to be done safely.

 

“We got our safeguarding down pretty tightly in terms of how if somebody comes into your practice, or consultancy room, you kind of know the things you’re looking for – whether their family circumstances, how are they personally, what other agencies they’re interacting with – what are the key signs of what’s going on. We know how to do it as a face-to face practitioner. The challenge is translating into the digital world.”

 

- Chris Martin – CEO, The Mix

 

The Mix has both in-person and digital services available. For their digital leaders, the physical world’s protective mechanisms are mimicked online.

 

“What we’ve always looked at is our online community – if you look at the principles that apply there it’s really similar to the youth club. You’re looking at how you engage with people, how you speak to them. All of those things are done, but it’s just rendered in a digital world. We use real world principles which we know work and apply them to the digital world.”

- Chris Martin – CEO, The Mix

 

 

Online tools and resources can help charities add safeguards

 

Dedicated online resources can help dispel some of the risks of using tech. Charity Digital’s podcasts offers advice for safeguarding technology. The podcast series discusses with how ethics can apply to the digital world and gives practical advice to charities.

 

Enhancing online security is one solution to protecting charity digital technology. We recently identified common cyber security threats and how to protect against them. For charities using the cloud as their main storage hub, Amazon Macie helps identify and protect sensitive data. We have also seen Breast Cancer Now use BreachAlert, which can check CRM systems for external threats.