Apparo and Cox Enterprises partnered together to offer a 9-week virtual cohort program to provide cybersecurity assessments, training, and resilience for nine nonprofits to reduce risk and focus on their mission work.
Sponsored by Cox Enterprises.
“Education is power. Knowledge is power,” Darlene Clark, mentor shared.
The 9-week program began on Wednesday, February 5th and will wrap-up on April 4th.
The program consisted of the following elements:
- Two Cybersecurity Educational Workshops
- Four 1:1 Tech Mentor meetings for individualized support for the nonprofits
- 1:1 Apparo Tech Therapy meeting for each nonprofit
- Access to Apparo’s Cybersecurity Assessment and Scorecard
- Templates, resources, and more for each nonprofit
Participating Nonprofits Included:
- Atlanta Beltline Partnership
- Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta
- Captain Planet Foundation
- Chattahoochee Riverkeeper
- Food Well Alliance
- Girls Inc of Greater Atlanta
- North Carolina Outward Bound School
- Park Pride
- Partnership for Southern Equity
Mentors
- Darlene Clark of Cox Enterprises
- David Jimenez of Cox Enterprises
- Cole Sutterfield of Cox Enterprises
- Abe Okomanyi, Cox Enterprises
- Eric Henderson of CyberSure LLC
- Becky Kirk of Cox Enterprises
- Sherri Leach of Ingersoll Rand
- Phanikumar Mallampalli of Cox Enterprises
- Robert Peden of Cox Enterprises
- Dave Clark, Individual Volunteer
When the project wrapped, volunteer mentors and the nonprofits shared the following:
“It really opened my eyes to the difference between the federal space and what a nonprofit has to go through. In the federal workforce, we have all the rules, regulations, and guidelines built in. Here it’s a much different perspective, because the nonprofit is smaller, and they have to decide what is going to work best for their budget,” Dave Clark, mentor for Atlanta Beltline shared.
“Yenting [the Apparo Program Associate] facilitated all workshops and weekly reminders, and this was super helpful. We were very impressed by the way this program was run, and it’s really going to help us keep our information secure,” Rosemary Pitrone of Chattahooche Riverkeeper shared.
“I want to particularly call out Sherri Lead, our mentor who was just really incredible. She was delightful to work with and incredibly knowledgeable. We are pleased with the time and cybersecurity expertise she provided to us,” Bill Murray of the NC Outward Bound School shared.
“Becky Kirk was awesome. I learned a lot, because I was not necessarily hired for this role. This program gave me the opportunity to stake some items to my CEO and tell him how we needed to prioritize our cybersecurity and put things into place,” Jennifer Walker with Girls Inc. shared.
