ISMS.online Privacy Notice

Context and Scope

This scope of this privacy policy is for the ISMS.online cloud software solution and this complementary website. It also covers the related services we offer for customers across the lifecycle of ISMS.online.

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how we collect and process personal data through the use of our services. It is important that you understand this privacy notice, and if you are also a customer of ours, that you read it together with our Customer Licence Agreement and support policy.

We may update this notice from time to time. Where a change is significant. We’ll make sure we let you know, usually by sending you an email or if you are a user of ISMS.online then by alerting you on the platform itself.

Who We Are and How to Contact Us

Alliantist Limited (company registration number 4922343) is the organisation behind ISMS.online. This privacy notice aims to give you information about how we collect and process personal data in accordance with our obligations.

You can contact us at any time through support@ISMS.online or engage our Data Protection Officer (DPO) by directly contacting them at DPO@ISMS.online.

Our Head Office and postal address is:
Sussex Innovation Centre
Science Park Square
Sussex University
Brighton, BN1 9SB
Telephone 01273 041140

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO. So please contact us through one of the ways above, or perhaps speak to your account manager in the first instance.

As a responsible supplier we really want to help where we can do so. Our philosophy for data protection and privacy extends beyond personal data into the protection and privacy for all valuable information, as underpinned by our strong security credentials including UKAS certified ISO 27001:2013.

Personal Data

Personal data means different things to different people, so we adopt the meaning from the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) which is in force from May 25th 2018. Personal data we process includes data such as first name, surname, email address, avatar/profile photo, IP address, job role, contact information along with any personally identifiable content in support requests. Payment and banking information is generally provided at a corporate information level but it will also be considered personal data where, in the unlikely event, an individual is paying for the services from their own account and we may need to know some of that banking or credit card information.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

We may also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to determine the attractiveness of a particular feature or evaluate performance for future investments. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with support for ISMS.online). In this case, we may be relieved of that specific contractual obligation or choose not to proceed with a request but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

Collecting personal data

When you visit our website or use our services, we collect personal data. The ways we collect it can be broadly categorised into the following:

• Provided directly by you – for example by completing our website forms for a demo, using the chat service to ask questions, signing up for our newsletter, calling in for help, applying for a job, participating in a webinar and completing your profile in ISMS.online or by contacting us for support. You don’t have to share much personal data at all to benefit from the services and can always ask us to remove that later too. If you choose not to share the relevant personal data, you understand that might mean we cannot provide the services.
• Collected automatically – we collect information such as IP address, device type, pages you visited and what links you clicked on. For our website and marketing work this means we can get a better understanding of user journeys and areas of interest, so we can keep providing great experiences and personalising content where appropriate. For ISMS.online user activity we collect similar information to ensure the service is optimised, and for performing some of our contract obligations to corporate customers, such as keeping audit logs and forensic histories of work done. Some of this information is collected through the use of cookies and related tracking technologies, including google ads.

You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our services may become inaccessible or not function properly. Our cookie policy explains that in more detail.

• Information we get from other parties – We might seek to find out more about someone from publicly available sources, or through reputable, qualified sources such as marketing and research organisations. We use this information to better personalise our services and on occasion to validate personal data you may provide.
• Information added by customers – a registered user of a customer or partner on the ISMS.online platform may add personal data into the secure cloud service as part of their purpose for using the platform. We have contractual obligations to those customers in our role as a data processor and those customers are responsible for that data and providing their own privacy notice to individuals about that data.

Important note – If you’re someone who doesn’t have a relationship with us but believe that an ISMS.online user has entered your personal data into our platform, you’ll need to contact that user’s organisation for any requests. They will be the data controller in that instance and we are the data processor. This includes where you want to access, correct, amend, or request that the user delete your personal data, or address any other individual’s rights. If you did still contact us, we will attempt to redirect you to contact the organisation you think may have entered the data.

ISMS.online is not intended to be marketed to, sold to or used by children. In our capacity as a data controller we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. If you think children’s information is being processed by us in our role as a data controller please contact us.

How we share your personal data

We will not share your personal data with any other company for marketing purposes.
Your data may technically be shared for the purpose of sub processing as part of a contract we have with a third party supplier, for example a third-party data centre processing information on our behalf. We may also be required to share your data with law enforcement, government agencies, courts or regulators in order to comply with applicable laws. Where allowed, we will notify you of this type of disclosure. Your data may also be shared with a potential acquirer or investor of our company, or any part of it, and any other people where we have your consent.

Lawful basis for use of your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to, following one of the lawful bases within the GDPR. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

• Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and, your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. In those instances we will have conducted a Legitimate Interest Assessment.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
• Where you have given your consent.

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

You have the right to withdraw consent or opt out at any time by contacting us or using the relevant mechanism provided in the communication at the time e.g. unsubscribe from a mail marketing campaign, or ‘do not contact’ response in a specific email sent by one of our staff.
Once opted out a minimal amount of data will be held in a suppression / do not contact list so that we avoid any future contact.

Purposes for use of your personal data

We have set out below, in a simple table format, a description of the ways we might use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

Purpose / Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis
To deliver our cloud platform services and related support for you as a registered user of the platform	First name Surname Email address IP address (users can optionally add more data if they choose to including avatar/photo profile and phone number)	Performance of a Contract
To process and deliver your order including managing payments, collecting and recovering debts	First name Surname Phone number Address (business) Payment information	Performance of a Contract (and Legitimate Interests if pursuing a debt)
To market and promote our services to prospective buyers and customers	First name Surname Job role Email address Contact number	Consent Legitimate interests
To use data analytics to report on and improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences	First name Surname Email address IP address	Legitimate interests Performance of a Contract (if not using aggregated reporting and anonymised information)
To prevent incidents, protect customers and respond quickly to security issues	First name Surname Email address IP address Phone number	Performance of a Contract Necessary to comply with a Legal Obligation
To respond to legal or regulatory demands	Any or all information held depending on the request	Necessary to comply with a Legal Obligation
For monitoring and quality control of sales demonstrations and phone calls, and for training and improvement of staff	A recording of the call and screen share (if used) Your name and email address (for demonstrations) or phone number (for sales calls)	Consent Legitimate interests

Set out below is a little more about the types of lawful basis that we will rely on to process your personal data.

• Legitimate Interest – means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do this using a Legitimate Interest Assessment and you can learn more about that by going to the ICO website. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law). You can also contact us for further information about how we assess our legitimate interests against any potential impact on you.
• Performance of Contract – means processing your data where it is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request before entering into such a contract.

Comply with a legal or regulatory obligation – means processing your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal or regulatory obligation that we are subject to.

International transfers

For customers using our UK/EU data centre: The UK is the primary processing location for your personal data within ISMS.online. For backup and redundancy purposes, a copy of that data is transferred to a data centre in Ireland.

For customers using our APAC data centre: Australia is the primary processing location of your personal data within ISMS.online. All backup data is also held within a second data centre within Australia

Personal data provided for support queries, accounting, sales and marketing purposes, is primarily handled in the UK. It may also involve transferring your data outside the UK because some of the third parties we use for sub processing have their facilities in other countries. Where your personal data is transferred outside the UK, it will only be transferred to countries that have been identified as providing adequate protection for UK data or to a third party where we have approved transfer mechanisms in place to protect your personal data like the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism we use when transferring your personal data out of the UK.

Data protection and security

We have put in place measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your personal data. This includes achievement of UKAS certified ISO 27001:2013 and a host of other security practices you can read about on our security credentials page. We aim to be a responsible supplier and prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, and avoid it being altered or disclosed where it shouldn’t be. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality and each one has relevant contracts in place to reinforce that aim.

We have also put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. Our intent is to notify within 24 hours or as soon as we become aware of any breach.

Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Following that period, we’ll make sure it’s deleted or anonymised.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. For example by law we have to keep basic information about customers for 6 years for tax and other purposes after they cease being customers. Depending on the use of ISMS.online some personal data may still be held because it is part of an initiative you contributed to that is still in existence and your organisation wants an audit trail.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data and request erasure as one of your legal rights, as set out below.

Your legal rights

You have legal rights for your personal data and in summary these are:

• Request access to your personal data
• Request correction of your personal data
• Request erasure of your personal data
• Object to processing of your personal data
• Request restriction of processing your personal data
• Request transfer of your personal data
• Right to withdraw consent

We have policies and practices in place for each of these requests so if you wish to exercise any of them please contact us and we will process that accordingly. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. We try to respond to all valid requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

You will not normally have to pay a fee for exercising your legal rights if the request is straightforward and valid. In the event the request is repetitive, excessive or unreasonable we will charge a reasonable fee. We may also choose to refuse a request. In this instance ICO guidance will be followed when choosing not to respond and this will include an explanation why, informing you of your right to complain to the supervisory authority and to a judicial remedy without undue delay and at the latest within one month.

Explanation about your Legal Rights

You have the right to:

• Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
• Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
• Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
• Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
• Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

You can contact us at any time through support@ISMS.online or engage our Data Protection Officer (DPO) by directly contacting them at DPO@ISMS.online.

Cookie Notice

A cookie is a small text file that is placed on your computer or device when you visit our website or use ISMS.online itself. We, and some of our third-party service providers, like Google, may use a few different types of cookies. Some are persistent cookies (cookies that remain on your hard drive for an extended period of time) and some are session cookies (cookies that expire when you close your browser).

We also use other tracking technologies like web beacons (sometimes called “tracking beacons” or “clear gifs”) and local storage. These are tiny graphics files that contain a unique identifier that enable us to recognise when someone has visited our websites or opened an email that we have sent them.

Cookies help us deliver the services well and enable us to optimise our approach to meet your needs to ensure that you have a great experience.

One simple way to prevent the use of cookies is to activate the facility which is available in most web browsers that enables the user to deny or accept cookies. However, you should know that certain essential cookies may be necessary in order to provide you with certain features of ISMS.online so if you deactivate them your service will not work as intended.

Below is a list of cookies that we use on our website and services. The types of cookies we use are always changing. Check back regularly to make sure you stay up to date. If you think we’ve missed a cookie, please let us know. We are not responsible for the privacy policies and practices of any third party links or services not in our control.

Website and related sales and marketing activity:

Cookie	Description
_ga _gac_SXCXQFK2E4 _gid _gcl_au _hjFirstSeen _hjIncludedInSessionSample _hjIncludedInPageviewSample _hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress _hjSessionUser_1830049 _hjSession_1830049 __hstc hubspotutk __hssc __hssrc _uetsid _uetvid AWSALBCORS AWSALB events_distinct_id _g2_session_id _cf_bm _pxhd __cfduid visitorId	Collects information about how visitors use our website. This information is used to compile reports and to help us improve the website. Information includes the number of visitors to the website, where visitors have come to this website from and the pages they visited. These cookies are set by Google, HubSpot, G2 and ZoomInfo.
cookie_notice_accepted	Remember a user’s choice about cookies on ISMS.online.
ads_prefs	We embed videos from our official YouTube channel and others we think are relevant, using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode. Learn more about embedding YouTube videos
__cfduid	Speeds up page load times. Does not contain any user identified information.
MUID test_cookie UserMatchHistory lanng bcookie lidc lanng Bscookie AnalyticsSyncHistory li_gc	Advertising Cookies used by Bing, Doubleclick and LinkedIn.

 

Hubspot necessary cookies
These are essential cookies that do not require consent.

Cookie	Description
hs_ab_test	This cookie is used to consistently serve visitors the same version of an A/B test page they’ve seen before. It contains the id of the A/B test page and the id of the variation that was chosen for the visitor. It expires at the end of the session.
_cfruid	This cookie is set by HubSpot’s CDN provider because of their rate limiting policies. Learn more about Cloudflare cookies. It expires at the end of the session

 

Hubspot chatflow cookie
This is the cookie used for the chatflows tool. If you’re a visitor, this allows you to chat with a representative on the site.

Cookie	Description
hs-messages-is-open	This cookie is used to determine and save whether the chat widget is open for future visits. It is set in your visitor’s browser when they start a new chat, and resets to re-close the widget after 30 minutes of inactivity. If your visitor manually closes the chat widget, it will prevent the widget from re-opening on subsequent page loads in that browser session for 30 minutes. It contains a boolean value of True if present. It expires in 30 minutes.
hs-messages-hide-welcome-message	This cookie is used to prevent the chat widget welcome message from appearing again for one day after it is dismissed. It contains a boolean value of True or False. It expires in one day.
messagesUtk	This cookie is used to recognize visitors who chat with you via the chatflows tool. If the visitor leaves your site before they’re added as a contact, they will have this cookie associated with their browser. If you chat with a visitor who later returns to your site in the same cookied browser, the chatflows tool will load their conversation history. The cookie is controlled by the Consent to collect chat cookies setting in your chatflow. If this setting is disabled, the cookie is controlled by the Consent to process setting in your chatflow. HubSpot will not drop the messagesUtk cookie for visitors who have been identified through the Visitor Identification API. The analytics cookie banner will not be impacted. This cookie will be specific to a subdomain and will not carry over to other subdomains. For example, the cookie dropped for info.example.com will not apply to the visitor when they visit www.example.com, and vice versa. It contains an opaque GUID to represent the current chat user. It expires in 13 months.

 

ISMS.online secure cloud platform:

Essential cookies
These cookies are required to provide the basic functionality of the service. Without these it would not be possible for a user to login.

Cookie	Description
_session_id	Identifies the visitor’s session to the service.
user_credentials	Identifies the logged in user to the service.
user_mfa_credentials	Identifies that the user has logged in using 2FA.
destroy_mfa_session_on_logout	Whether the `user_mfa_credentials` cookie needs deleting when logging out.
subdomain_to_redirect	Redirect the user to their own sub-domain if they try and access the site at the main domain.
idp	Redirect to single sign on login if single sign on user
accessedWithHash	Maintains hash values on the requested url when redirected
clear_archive_items_info_panel_read	Indicate if the user has read the information panel relating to archiving Track items.
certification_date_prompt_skipped	Identifies that the current user has chosen to add a Planned Certification Date either later, or not at all.

 

Live chat and FAQs
For the chat and FAQs to function within ISMS.online the following cookies should be present.

Cookie	Description
w_fr fw_flu fw_vi fw_sq first_session	We use Freshchat to power the Live Chat and FAQ functions within ISMS.online. These cookies count website visitors, track visitor events, and measures website performance and stability.

 

Google Analytics

Cookie	Description
_ga _ga _gid _gid	We use Google Analytics to collect information about how the service is being used. There are two versions of each of these cookies (hence the duplication).

 

Preferences cookies
These cookies are set during normal use of the service but are not essential for the service to operate. They help enhance the user experience by remembering the settings applied by the user so the user does not have to repeat them.

Cookie	Description
_x15	An obsfucated form of the user’s email address. This is only set if the user chooses to remember their email address when logging in.
homepage_favourites_sort_order	The order the user wants their favourites to appear on the homepage.
clusters_sort_order	The order the user wants to display their Clusters in.
cluster_<id>_sort_cols	The columns being sorted when viewing todos within a Cluster.
cluster_<id>_direction	The sort order to apply to the column being sorted viewing todos within a Cluster.
cluster_<id>_filters	The filter options applied when viewing todos within a Cluster.
trust_development_assessment_<id>	The results graph display options when managing a Development Assessment.
characteristic_<id>	The characteristic specific results graph display options when managing a Development Assessment.
para_view_mode, para_view_checkbox_data	The results graph view mode when managing a PARA Assessment.
cal	The display settings for pages showing To-dos.
user_<id>_project_<id>_critical_path_setting	Whether to display the critical path in the GANTT chart.
projectStructureViewAdditionalInfo<id>	Whether to display additional information in the Project outline view.
arm_page_user_	The location of the user in the ARM content.

 

Third party cookies
Google Analytics
Visit https://www.google.com/analytics/ to find out more about Google Analytics and https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies for information about how Google uses cookies.

Hubspot cookies
Visit https://knowledge.hubspot.com/reports/what-cookies-does-hubspot-set-in-a-visitor-s-browser for information about how Hubspot uses cookies.

Freshchat cookies
Visit https://https://support.freshchat.com/support/solutions/articles/50000002310-freshdesk-messaging-cookies for information about how Freshchat uses cookies.

LinnkedIn Cookies
Visit https://www.linkedin.com/legal/l/cookie-table for information about how LinkedIn uses cookies.
–

This version was last updated on 21st September 2022 as version 3.0

To read the previous Privacy Notice click here.