Date Published May 25th, 2018
The Open Group, L.L.C. ("The Open Group," "us," "we," or "our,") commitment to protecting the privacy of all who engage with us is founded on the principles of lawfulness, fairness, and transparency, obtaining only minimal Data needed for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and for no longer than is necessary, and, with the utmost integrity and confidentiality, ensuring appropriate security and protection to the best of our abilities against unlawful processing or accidental loss, destruction or damage.
This Privacy Policy governs The Open Group use of Data ("Data"), collected from or on behalf of users of our products and/or services, whether by legal agreements or by access through our website https://www.opengroup.org, as well as other websites that The Open Group operates and links to this Privacy Policy (collectively referred to as "Site(s)"). It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your Data that you voluntarily provide us online or through in-person communications and how you can access and update this Data. All Data collected and processed by The Open Group shall be governed by this Privacy Policy which has been updated to comply with The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679, which shall take effect on May 25, 2018.
This Privacy Policy applies to all Data processed by full-time and part-time employees, contractors and partners doing business on behalf of The Open Group, as well as all legal entities, all operating locations in all countries, and all business processes conducted by The Open Group.
You may visit our Site(s) without revealing any Data about yourself. You are not required to provide Data that we request, but, if you choose not to do so, in some cases we will not be able to provide you with our products, services, or respond to any queries you may have.
However, if you wish to engage with us, you will be required to create a user account wherein we will collect, retain, and use your Data to register you and verify your authority to enter our Site(s) and access our services. You will have complete control and management of your user account to opt-in and customize your customer experience with The Open Group. Our intention is to engage with you with the least amount of Data and we wish to be clear that we do not ask for and do not want to receive or store any sensitive Data.
At any time, you may update your Data and opt out of features we provide. We use your Data to deliver our products and services to you, where we reasonably believe it allows us to protect and administer your records, to comply with certain laws and regulations, to help us design or improve our products and services, and improve the content and general administration of the Site(s). We will ask your consent before using Data for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.
The Open Group collects the following Data for use purposes explained in the next sections:
Name, title, email, physical address, region, phone number, member company relationship, and other contact details
Certification information, examination voucher number, examination date, location, date certified, level of certification, credentials, badges
Online profile data/usage
Social media profile information
Education and professional information
Communication information including The Open Group Help Desk communications
Purchasing and payment information
Registration and participation in The Open Group events and activities
Information about the device(s) you use
Location information, IP address, Client/Agent
Author and peer review information
Other information you upload or provide us through 3rd parties whom you have authorized to share such information with us to deliver our services.
Transactions Processing
The Open Group uses your Data such as name, physical address, telephone number, email address, and company/institution to engage in interactions with you, including contacting you about your membership, event participation, download publications, and to fulfill orders. As a general rule we do not obtain access to billing, credit card or bank information, but we may need to share some Data for verification purposes with delivery services, credit card payment services, and other third parties to complete the transaction. Before providing financial information, you should carefully review the privacy policy of these third-party providers.
To join The Open Group as a member and participate in or be informed about Forum and Work Group activities, we will collect the name, title, organization name, email, business address, region, and other business-related contact information of your organization's primary representatives for our contractual purposes. As an employee of a member organization, the Data you provide us when creating a user account will be used to deliver member benefits.
If you are a participant in The Open Group standards development process, we use your Data to comply with The Open Group Standards Process. Participation in The Open Group standards development process is documented through various methods of Forum and Work Group participation, e.g. rosters, submission documents, collaboration platforms, records of meeting attendance, responses to ballots, publicly available participation lists, and declaration of affiliations.
With your permission, we will use your name and email address to send you informational newsletters, invite you to attend live events or webinars, provide notices of new product releases and service developments, get feedback or input from you through surveys, and respond directly to your inquiries. You may unsubscribe from these communications either through your user account preferences or through the unsubscribe option in those emails.
The Open Group Events
Your user account login or links from emails we send you will provide access to our third-party provider registration sites for live events, streaming services, webinars, and other hosted activities. These providers may request your contact details in order to deliver the services, provide confirmations, updates, transcripts, and other related purposes. Please be sure to review the privacy policies of these third-party providers. These providers may furnish us with information you provided to them in connection with your attendance, such as date, start and end times, your personal or business information, join and leave times, attention to duration, registration date and reference number, consent to receive additional information, IP address, client agent, and event survey responses. We use this information for analytical purposes to design and improve our services to you.
We may communicate with you about a meeting, conference, or event hosted by The Open Group. This may include information about the event's content, event logistics, payment status, updates, and additional information related to the event. Information you provide when registering for or participating in a meeting, conference, or event shall only be shared with its sponsors or exhibitors if you opt-in for us to do so, and the treatment of such information is further subject to the privacy policies of those parties.
Please note that The Open Group event exhibitors and other third parties may directly request your Data at their conference booths or presentations. Providing your information to them is optional, and you should review their privacy policies to address your particular needs and concerns about how they will treat your Data.
The Open Group Publications
Your user account login will be required to access and download our publications from The Open Group Library.
To receive a license from The Open Group, we will require your name, title, organization name, email, business address, region and other business-related contact information for our contractual and enforcement purposes.
Certification, Credential, and Accreditation Services
For Individuals, we collect your name, title, certification level, badge earned, certification date, email address, organization and other verification information, such as examination date, location, and voucher number, for the purpose issuing a certification and or badge and enforcing our Certification and Trademark License Agreement with you. Where you agree for us to do so, we will include your name and certification or credential details and badges earned in the certification registries on our public Site(s) or those hosted by our service providers, when applicable.
If you received training through any of our Accredited Training Course (ATC) Providers, your name, email address, training location, and voucher number may have been provided to us, under the reporting requirement of our Accreditation Agreement with them, for purposes of exam voucher management, verification and other legitimate business reasons. We will retain this information for as long as is necessary to substantiate the certification that you may have achieved by passing the exam, or until such time as we have terminated the certification program. We will safeguard your privacy under this Privacy Policy.
For ATC and certified product providers we collect the name, title, email, phone number, organization, and business address of your contact representatives for purposes of administering and enforcing our legal agreements.
If you are a trainer delivering an ATC, the ATC Provider has been required under its Accreditation Agreement with us to provide certain information relating to your professional qualifications for purposes of meeting the conformance requirements of the ATC. This identifying Data may include, but is not limited to, your name, email address, location and certification level. We will safeguard your privacy under this Privacy Policy.
Online Forums and Social Networks
Some services available on the Site(s) permit you to participate in interactive discussions, post comments to blogs, opportunities, or other content to a bulletin board or exchange, or otherwise engage in networking activities. Some of these services are moderated. The Open Group does not control the content that users post to these forums or social networks. You should carefully consider whether you wish to submit Data to these forums or social networks and tailor any content you submit appropriately and in accordance with the relevant terms of use. You should also review any additional terms and conditions that may govern your use of these services, including terms related to sharing your Data and receiving communications.
We provide you with a means for submitting your resume or other Data through the Site(s) or by email for consideration for employment opportunities at The Open Group. Data received through resume submissions will be kept confidential. We may contact you for additional information to supplement your resume, and we may use your Data or keep it on file for future use when making our hiring decisions.
Controlling Your Data
The Open Group provides you the ability to access, review and update your Data, change your opt-in settings and customize your profile preferences in your user account.
Please note that if you opt-out of or unsubscribe from receiving our promotional or marketing emails, you may still receive certain service-related communications from us, such as administrative and services announcements and messages about your account.
You have the right to remove your Data, but bear in mind that doing so may affect other areas, for example the loss of certification when you no longer have an account record that corroborates that certification. To protect your information from accidental or malicious destruction, after you delete information for our services, we may not immediately delete residual copies for our servers and may not remove information from our backup servers. Should you wish us to do so, The Open Group will remove all your Data, provided there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it. Please contact us at privacy(at)opengroup.org if you wish to remove all your Data and we will assist you within 30 days.
Updating and Deleting Data
The Open Group provides you the ability to review and update the contact information you provide to us and other account information related to your membership, purchase activities, and certification. If you wish to review and/or update any information, you may access your account and review and update your Data, or you may contact us.
We will also delete Data that you have provided to us: (a) upon your request or (b) upon termination of your account; provided, however, The Open Group will retain a copy of the Data, if required for legal reasons.
If you wish to review, correct, or deletion of any information you have provided to us, contact us at privacy(at)opengroup.org. We will respond to your request for access within 30 days.
The Open Group recognizes the privacy interests of children and we encourage parents and guardians to take an active role in their children's online activities and interests. The Site(s) are not intended for children under the age of 16. The Open Group does not target its services or these Site(s) to children under 16. The Open Group does not collect age-identifying information and we do not knowingly collect personally information from children under the age of 16. If you believe that we might have any information from or about a child under 16, please contact us so that we can immediately delete the information.
We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyze data about webpage traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data are removed from the system.
The Site(s) may track information that will be maintained, used and disclosed in aggregate form only and which will not contain your personally identifiable information, for example, without limitation, the total number of visitors to our Site(s), the number of visitors to each page of our Site(s), browser type, external web sites linked to, and IP addresses. We may analyze these data for trends and statistics in the aggregate, and we may use such aggregate information to administer the Site(s), track user movement, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use.
We will not sell or lease your Data. We will not distribute, or reveal your Data to parties outside our business associates unless (a) we are required to do so by law, regulation or other government authority or otherwise in cooperation with an ongoing investigation of a governmental authority, (b) to enforce The Open Group Terms of Use agreement or to protect our rights or (c) to protect the safety of users of our Site(s) and our services.
We do not provide user account or Data outside The Open Group and its associates for the purpose of advertising, independent telemarketing, or direct mail marketing of any products or services.
Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our Site(s), you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide while visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this Privacy Policy. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.
We employ procedural and technological measures that are reasonably designed to help protect your personally identifiable information including sensitive Data from loss, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration or destruction. The Open Group may use encryption, secure socket layer, firewall, password protection and other physical security measures to help prevent unauthorized access to your Data. We may also place internal restrictions on who in the company may access data to help prevent unauthorized access to your personally identifiable information. These precautions take into account the risks involved in the processing, the nature of personally identifiable information, and best practices in the industry for security and Data protection.
Third Party Processing and Transfer of Information to Other Countries
At times, The Open Group may receive or transfer Data to/and or from partners that work with The Open Group in order to provide products and services. We shall seek your consent to transfer minimal Data such as your name and email address through which the third-party provider can contact you to obtain more information to complete the service; at which time you can make an informed choice as to whether or not share your information with that party. We will only disclose Data to third-party agents that have given us contractual assurances that they will provide at least the same level of privacy protection as is required by this Privacy Policy and compliance with the standard contractual clauses issued by the European Commission.
If third parties process Data on our behalf, in a manner that does not comply with this Privacy Policy or by the European Commission, we are accountable, unless we prove that we are not responsible for the event giving rise to the damage. The Open Group will take reasonable steps to prevent or stop such processing. In such case, the third party is liable for damages unless it is proven that The Open Group is responsible for the event giving rise to the violation.
The Open Group is a global organization that engages in international activities and may transfer Data to other countries. By submitting your information to The Open Group via our Site(s) or in connection with your interaction with us offline, you consent to such transfers and to the processing of this information in other countries. Your Data are accessible only by The Open Group employees and consultants who have a reasonable need to access such information in order for us to fulfill contractual, legal and professional obligations. All of our employees and consultants have entered into confidentiality agreements requiring that they maintain the confidentiality of our customer Data.
Your European Union Privacy Rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (also known as GDPR), if you are an individual protected by the GDPR you may have certain rights as a data subject. To request information about or avail yourself of those rights, please send an email to privacy(at)opengroup.org with "GDPR Request" in the subject line. In the email please describe, with specificity, the GDPR right you are requesting assistance with. We will respond to you within 30 days.
Under California Civil Code Section 1798.83 (also known as S.B. 27), if you are a California resident and your business relationship with The Open Group is primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, you may request certain data regarding disclosure, if any, of Data to third parties for the third parties' direct marketing purposes. Please be informed that The Open Group does not disclose any Data whatsoever to third parties for direct marketing purposes.
Enforcement and Liability
The Open Group is subject to the jurisdiction and enforcement and investigatory authority of the United States Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission.
All employees of The Open Group that have access to Data covered by this Privacy Policy in the U.S. and other countries outside the E.U. are responsible for conducting themselves in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Failure of an employee of The Open Group to comply with this Privacy Policy may result in disciplinary action.
Collaboration with Authorities
The Open Group has appointed and mandated a Data Privacy Officer who represents the regulatory authorities inside The Open Group organization, and in return represents The Open Group organization to regulatory authorities. The Open Group privacy officer will ensure proper communication with the relevant regulatory authority for privacy. The privacy officer will lead investigative action, complaint handling, and data breach notification. The privacy officer will also monitor regulatory changes and consult the regulatory authority wherein implementation of a regulatory or technological change leads to doubt.
The Open Group assures compliance with the U.S. and E.U. by fully investigating and attempting to resolve any complaint or dispute regarding the use and disclosure of Data in violation of this Privacy Policy within thirty (30) days. Any questions or concerns regarding the use or disclosure of Data should first be directed to:
Apex Plaza, Forbury Road
Reading, Berkshire RG1 1AX, UK
+44- (0)118-950-8311
Attention: Data Privacy Officer
Or e-mail to privacy(at)opengroup.org
How Will You Know if the Policy is Changed?
The Open Group periodically reviews and verifies the accuracy of this Privacy Policy and the company's compliance with the regulations, and mends any identified issues. If we make any material change to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by email if you have an account with The Open Group, or by means of a notice on the Site(s) prior to the change becoming effective. Please periodically review the Site(s) for the latest information on our privacy practices.