Per the Maryland Attorney General’s Office: Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown announced today that the State has reached a multistate settlement with Blackbaud, Inc., a software company, to resolve allegations that Blackbaud failed to protect consumers’ personal information when it experienced a data breach in 2020 that impacted thousands of nonprofit organizations nationwide, including 290 nonprofits in Maryland. Under the settlement, Blackbaud has agreed to overhaul its data security and breach notification practices and make a $49.5 million payment to the states, of which Maryland will receive $820,156.
Blackbaud provides software to manage constituent data, including contact and demographic information, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial information, employment and wealth information, donation history, and protected health information to various nonprofit organizations, including charities, higher education institutions, K-12 schools, healthcare organizations, religious organizations, and cultural organizations. This type of highly sensitive data was exposed during the 2020 data breach, impacting over 13,000 Blackbaud nonprofit organizations nationwide.