A new scheme matching up IT professionals from the private sector to provide free advice on security and data protection to charities has been announced.

The GiveADay initiative will see senior technology professionals from UK companies paired up with charities according to their needs. So far almost 100 IT professionals, including Andrezj Kawalec, chief technology officer at HP, have joined the scheme ahead of the official launch later this month.

Amar Singh, GiveADay founder and data privacy and security executive said: “Charities are in a particularly vulnerable position - they hold a lot of sensitive data on both their service users and donors.”

He added that the requirement for charities to report data breaches to the Information Commissioner's Office “results in disproportionate fines to the third sector plus the stigma of adverse publicity that can severely impact on operations and fundraising ability”.

Earlier this year the British Pregnancy Advisory Service was fined £200,000 by the ICO after an anti-abortion hacker gained access to thousands of client names, addresses and phone numbers and threatened to publish them. Norwood has also been fined.

The Charities Securities Forum (CSF) has welcomed the launch of GiveADay. Martyn Croft, co-founder of the CSF and chief information officer at the Salvation Army, said: “For GiveADay to facilitate easy access to freely given expertise in this way is a fantastic opportunity for all charities to further enhance the information security so essential to their work.”

Charities that have already signed up to recieve support include Cancer Research UK, Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Children’s Charity and Future First.

Ian Chivers, director of finance and operations at GOSHCC, said: “Our members – service users and supporters alike - trust us with a lot of their personal data. Protecting their private information is of utmost importance to us and we are delighted that the UK’s best talent are willing to help us with this, via the GiveADay movement.”

GiveADay's has established an advisory board, which is is made up of Andrzej Kawalec, CTO of HP; Edward Tucker, head of cyber security at HMRC; Sarah Clarke, an experienced risk and governance consultant; Brian Honan of BH Consulting; Neira Jones, an independent security adviser; Jason Shankaradasan and Jason Waterman, both of Badenoch & Clark.

Charities can register to receive support from GiveADay online here.