Protect Your Church from Data Loss or Theft

When First Baptist (not the church's real name) hired a network engineering firm to help them with their computer system, they never dreamed they were inviting in thieves. But when employees of the firm saw the scope of information saved in the church's database, they copied it and rented the list to businesses that wanted to reach people in their community, segmenting it by various demographics—including contributions!

Data is one of the most valuable assets a church has, but trying to figure out what it's worth so we can adequately protect it is challenging. Protecting data isn't difficult, but the task must be approached as deliberately as the fire and security protection we apply to our church buildings.

The first step is to recognize that your church has different kinds of data, and classifying data helps set a value to strategically protect it. While some data is ...