Senior Center Fundraising Thwarted When Data on Servers is Held Ransom

Who: Ballard Northwest Senior Center

# of Accounts Breached: The nonprofit center serves 4,000 seniors in Ballard, Magnolia, and Queen Anne, and raises much of the money for all its activities and services itself.

What was affected: Servers of the senior center.

When it happened: March 2019

How it happened: The Ballard Northwest Senior Center found itself in the bulls-eye of a ransomware attack, with its server wiped just weeks before their biggest fundraiser of the year. The center quickly found out someone attacked them with ransomware, encrypting all their files, holding the data hostage.

Outcome: The senior center says it doesn’t know if it was targeted, or if the ransomware attack hit them at random, but now it’s struggling to get back on its feet.