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Berkeley study finds 79% of Washington nonprofits hit by cyberattacks; many lack recovery plans

UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) · April 17, 2026
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

A UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity survey of roughly 100 Washington nonprofits found 79% experienced at least one cyberattack in the past three years, with widespread gaps in incident response, staffing and budgets; CLTC urged data minimization, shared services and state-level coordination.

UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) onstage in Seattle released a statewide survey showing that most Washington nonprofits have faced cyberattacks in recent years and many lack the plans and staff to respond. Shannon Pearson, a senior fellow at CLTC, said 79% of survey respondents reported experiencing at least one cyberattack in the last three years.

The report—part of the CyberCAN initiative—used a mixed-methods approach (a written survey of about 100 nonprofits and interviews with nonprofit and local government staff) to map nonprofit cybersecurity posture across Washington. CLTC found most responding organizations are small and local: about 61% have fewer than 20 full-time staff, and a third have fewer than five. Many deliver high-touch services (food banks, shelters, addiction services) that require holding sensitive…

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