Robert Burns charity urges members to be vigilant after major cyberhack

A charity which looks after the farm where Robert Burns lived and wrote some of his most famous work has warned members after a major cyber security breach.

The Robert Burns Ellisland Trust has revealed that people’s contact details and details of payments or donations to the Trust were on a database, which may have been accessed.

It’s after the software company Beacon CRM – which the Trust and more than 1500 other charities use to hold people’s contact details – was attacked by hackers at the end of July.

In an email to members, the organisation which runs the farm in Dumfries, stressed that Beacon does not hold any card payment details.

But it is urging people to be vigilant of any scammers trying to impersonate the Trust and contacting them.

In an email to supporters, they said: “We’re getting in touch to let you know about a cyber-security incident affecting Beacon, the company whose software we use to hold and manage contact information and membership details for people connected to Robert Burns Ellisland Trust.

“We take the security of your information extremely seriously and this is not a failure of any of our security measures.

“The Beacon servers were attacked directly; this means that all organisations that use Beacon will be affected to some lesser or greater degree.

“Beacon does not hold ANY card details for you or any payment you may have made to Robert Burns Ellisland Trust.”

Beacon confirmed on its website earlier this month that a copy of the database including customer data was made and likely downloaded in a readable format.

Several other Scottish charities have been affected, including the Scottish Refugee Council and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.