Details about cyber incidents involving non-profit and non-governmental organizations across critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare and public health are not centrally reported and collected. That creates gaps for researchers, IT experts and others seeking to analyze trends in their industries, said Stanley Mierzwa of Kean University, who spearheaded a recent project with students and faculty to create such a repository.
“Nonprofits provide incredibly important services – critical services to underserved communities,” he said in an interview with Information Security Media Group. “It’s important that they keep their systems available up and running so that they can meet the needs of the community.”
The availability of a central repository to provide insights into cyber incidents affecting nonprofits and non-government organizations is critical, Mierzwa said.
“Having intelligence that’s valuable to very specific sectors is helpful – understanding trends, or whether there’s an uptick in a particular year, or, within a nonprofit sector. Organization can put their guard up more,” he said.
“That’s how this connection between understanding cyberattacks with nonprofits and how it could affect those who are receiving services is important. This sort of intelligence would add value to organization leaders – everyone from the CEO to the chief operating officer,” he said.
In the interview (see audio link above), Mierzwa also discussed:
- The types of non-profit and non-government organizations his team studied and the incident reporting gaps discovered;
- Details about the newly created cyber incident repository, including the type of information it contains, and the type of users who can benefit from its data;
- Top cyber issues in the healthcare sector to watch in 2025.
Mierzwa is the director and lecturer of the Center for Cybersecurity within Transformational Learning and External Affairs at Kean University in New Jersey. Mierzwa’s research interests span cybersecurity risk management, cyber competencies, policy, global public health, and law enforcement technologies. His professional background spans academia, non-profit and public health, private sector IT leadership, law enforcement and cybersecurity roles with substantial global impact. He has significant international experience, working “on the ground” across, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.