July 31, 2020

A notice to our Donors and Friends:

On Thursday, July 16, 2020, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Foundation was informed by Blackbaud, Inc. (“Blackbaud”), a third-party service provider, that they had discovered and stopped a ransomware attack on their systems in May 2020.

Blackbaud is one of the world’s largest software technology providers to thousands of charities and non-profits including St. Joseph’s Healthcare Foundation (Hamilton). We use their software to record information about our engagement with our community of donors and friends. Many charities around the world were impacted by this incident.

Blackbaud has assured St. Joseph’s Healthcare Foundation that no credit or debit card information, no personal banking information, or passwords were compromised during this security incident. In addition, we can assure you that no hospital patient records are stored on the Foundation’s database.

Based on Blackbaud’s investigation, which involved law enforcement officials and independent forensics experts, Blackbaud has confirmed that the security incident was contained and no data was misused or disseminated. They have also assured all clients that they have addressed the system vulnerability related to this incident and have undertaken additional measures to protect all data. The data affected by this incident may have included names, addresses, contact information and history with the Foundation.

St. Joseph’s Healthcare Foundation takes the privacy and security of donor information very seriously. To honour the trust you have placed in our Foundation and in an abundance of caution, we are proactively informing our community of donors and friends about this incident. Please rest assured our Foundation will continue to work with our own cyber-security experts to ensure your personal information remains safe and secure.

We value the relationships we have built with our treasured donors and friends and we thank you for your understanding and support. If you have any questions or would like additional information, we invite you to email us at fdnprivacy@stjoesfoundation.ca or call us at 905-521-6036.

Additional information about the security incident is available on Blackbaud’s website: https://www.blackbaud.com/securityincident