DonorDirect, the only enterprise-wide donor management system developed exclusively for ministries, is set hold their annual conference – DonorDirect 2017 – May 7-10th, at the Renaissance Dallas Richardson Hotel.
DonorDirect’s vision has always been to provide ministries the most advanced donor management software, and their annual conference gives their clients the opportunity to learn more about DonorDirect products while networking with industry peers. The conference will represent over 60 of the largest ministries and non-profits from around the world that use DonorDirect’s software platform.
This year’s conference will focus on new features and technologies for products within DonorStudio Suite, DonorDirect’s flagship product line that offers an enterprise-wide software solution for ministries that face the challenges of diverse operations, from inputting donation information, to generating up-to-the-minute reports, to processing online donations. The DonorStudio Suite includes StudioEnterprise with Advanced CRM and StudioOnline, and extends payment acceptance for donations to mail, phone, web, and mobile.
Keynotes and breakout sessions are led by experts and leaders within DonorDirect, and additionally, DonorDirect’s conference agenda will feature vendor-led sessions that cover relevant topics the ministry and non-profit sectors face today.
Protecting Donor Information
Top of mind is certainly a scenario that would leave any ministry in a panic – the threat of a data breach. As donations have shifted online, ministries and non-profits have become an attractive target for cyber thieves, and the risk of having personal and financial information stolen has become a harsh reality for many organizations.
Case in point is a data breach at the Utah Food Bank in 2015, where an unauthorized individual gained access to the information, including names, credit and debit card numbers and security codes, of 10,385 donors through the food bank’s donation page between October 8, 2013 and July 16, 2015.
Although there is an ongoing forensics investigation and the breach has been contained, the methods used in cleaning up after the breach do nothing to protect the donor records that have already been stolen. Still unknown are the after-effects of the breach, which could prove devastating to those donors affected as well as Utah Food Bank.
In many states – Utah included – a business or organization that experiences a data breach must notify the affected individuals and offer free credit monitoring services. In the case of the Utah Food Bank breach, they offered a year of credit monitoring and identity restoration services to the people whose data was pilfered. Notifying the affected donors and paying for their credit monitoring comes at a big cost to your organization. But what’s worse is the long-term effect the event might have on future donations if people don’t feel safe using your website.
Bluefin to Speak on PCI P2PE at DonorDirect Conference
Accepting online donations means that a ministry or non-profit is responsible for securing, storing, and handling all of the donor payment data. With 1,093 data breaches reported in 2016 – where large and small corporations fell victim to fraudsters who infiltrated point of sale (POS) systems and stole clear-text cardholder data – the need to provide secure payment transactions in the ministry and non-profit sectors is more prevalent than ever.
As a partner of DonorDirect, Bluefin provides a PCI-validated Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) solution to DonorDirect and their clients. Bluefin’s PCI-validated P2PE solutions encrypt cardholder data at the Point of Interaction (POI), preventing clear-text cardholder data from being present in a merchant or organization’s system or network where it could be accessible in the event of a data breach.
On May 8th, Bluefin’s Chief Innovation Officer, Ruston Miles, will speak at DonorDirect’s Conference on the importance of P2PE and PCI security in non-profit and faith-based industries.
“Donors rely on ministries to secure their data,” states Ruston. “However, for many organizations, little attention is paid to securing the donor’s privacy and payment data as it travels through local networks or is stored in databases. This is a huge risk exposure to both the organization and the donor. For nonprofits of any size, a cardholder data breach could prove catastrophic. This is why security must be at the heart of any serious donor management system conversation.”
“The primary reason we recommend Bluefin to our clients is their constant innovation in the area of security – when it comes to securing donor data, tokenization and P2PE solutions are an absolute must for ministries,” said Frank Smith, CEO for DonorDirect.
DonorDirect and Bluefin both believe that donors should be diligent to research not only where their donations are going, but how they are getting there. Together, DonorDirect and Bluefin have taken an industry-leading step forward in protecting donor data and creating an altogether new dimension of donor trust by bringing Bluefin’s PCI-validated P2PE encryption to ministry call centers, mail rooms, websites and conferences.
Bluefin is a proud vendor of the DonorDirect Conference, and will be on-site to showcase their PCI-validated P2PE solution.