Dear Friends,
Seminary of the Southwest is deeply grateful for your support and we are committed to excellence in the stewardship of our relationship with you. Accompanying our gratitude is a responsibility to keep you informed of relevant matters involving the maintenance of your personal information in our data systems.
With that in mind, we write to inform you that on or about August 2, 2020, Seminary of the Southwest administration was informed of a recent data security incident. The seminary is a licensed subscriber of certain cloud-based enterprise software and database solutions provided by Blackbaud. Blackbaud’s cloud-based financial accounting, donor engagement, and database storage solutions are used by more than 45,000 colleges and universities, foundations, health care organizations, and other nonprofits across the globe, a great many of which are also victims of this data breach.
Blackbaud has confirmed that data maintained on its servers for the Seminary, as well as data it maintains for thousands of other institutions across the globe, was part of a ransomware data breach earlier this year. Personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and birth dates may have been accessed. Blackbaud indicates that no credit card information, bank information, or Social Security numbers were accessed by the cybercriminal. Moreover, the Seminary does not usually collect and store such data in Blackbaud data fields.
Blackbaud discovered and stopped this ransomware attack in May. Blackbaud worked with security experts and law enforcement to respond to this incident and received confirmation that the stolen data was destroyed and not used by the cybercriminal.
Based on the nature of this incident and the investigation Blackbaud and law enforcement performed, Blackbaud indicated to its users that it has no reason to believe that any data went beyond the cybercriminal, or that the data has been misused or further disseminated by the cybercriminal. Blackbaud has also hired a third-party team of experts to continue monitoring for any such activity. For additional information about Blackbaud’s response, please visit blackbaud.com/securityincident.
Seminary of the Southwest values the trust and investment of everyone in our global community and sincerely apologizes for any inconvenience this incident may have caused. Please be in touch with us at [email protected] with any concerns you may have.
