Last year, 68% of nonprofits confirmed at least one data breach. Between 2024 and 2025, cyberattacks on civil society organizations rose 241%. In 2026, every indicator shows those numbers climbing higher.

The bigger problem is not the attack. It is the silence that follows. Most nonprofits have no monitoring in place. No security team. No alerts. A breach moves through donor records and financial accounts for weeks, sometimes months, before anyone notices.

What a Breach Looks Like Without a Security Team

Attackers do not announce themselves. They get in through a phishing email sent to a volunteer. They sit inside the network, learning the layout. Then they move. Donor databases. Wire transfer processes. Credentials stored in shared spreadsheets.

The average time to detect a breach across all sectors is 194 days. For nonprofits with no monitoring, that window is likely longer. By the time the organization notices something is wrong, the damage is done.

What the 2026 Landscape Looks Like

Attacks on nonprofits rose 30% year over year in 2024. The 241% increase between 2024 and 2025 was not an anomaly. It was a trend. In 2026, the frequency of attacks and the sophistication of the tools attackers use are both increasing.

Nonprofits are the second most targeted sector by organized criminal groups. Most have no dedicated security staff. That combination makes them a consistent, high-value target.

The First Signs of a Breach

Watch for these: email accounts sending messages no one wrote, login alerts from unfamiliar locations, staff reporting they were locked out of accounts, donors receiving suspicious messages from your organization’s address, or unexplained wire transfers.

If you see any of these and have no security monitoring in place, assume you are breached and start an investigation.

What to Do

Start with visibility. If you do not know what is on your network, you cannot protect it. Get an inventory of every device, account, and application your staff and volunteers access.

Turn on multi-factor authentication across every account. This is free on most platforms and stops the majority of credential-based attacks.

If your organization handles donor data, medical records, or financial transactions, get a security assessment done. You do not need a full-time security team. A fractional cybersecurity consultant gives you expert-level guidance at a fraction of the cost of an internal hire.