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.
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 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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 with the UK’s International Data Transfer Addendum.
Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism we use when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
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.
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.
You have legal rights for your personal data and in summary these are:
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.
You have the right to:
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.
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.
Cookie consent on ISMS.online can be managed through a third party service called Usercentrics. This allows you control over which cookies you would like to accept. In managing your cookies the recipient of your data Usercentrics GmbH Sendlingerstr. 7, 80331 Munich. In the context of order processing, (Alliantist Limited) transmits consent data to Usercentrics GmbH, as a processor. Consent data means the following data: Date and time of the visit or consent / refusal, device information. The processing of the data is carried out for the purpose of compliance with legal obligations and the associated documentation of consents. The consent data is stored locally in the European Union, for 1 year. For more information about the collected data and contact options, please visit https://usercentrics.com/privacy-policy/
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 _ga_SXCXQFK2E4 CookieControl |
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, HotJar and ZoomInfo. |
| 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, and LinkedIn. |
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. |
The following applies when a customer chooses to use our optional integration with Google Drive.
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.
LinkedIn Cookies
Visit https://www.linkedin.com/legal/l/cookie-table for information about how LinkedIn uses cookies.
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This version was last updated on 21st October 2022 as version 3.2
To read the previous Privacy Notice click here.