NHSA Privacy Policy
Approved by the NHSA Board on June 6, 2022
This NHSA Privacy Policy is intended to cover the following areas:
What Information does NHSA collect?
How does NHSA use your information?
Third party links and services
How Does NHSA Protect Your Information?
Where is your information stored and processed?
How long do we keep your information?
This policy applies to all of the personal information and data we collect about you, including information collected at events and information collected at https://www.Nationalhomelandsecurity.org/ and any other websites (including mobile access) where this policy is linked to; all of which are referred to as the “Site” in this policy.
The National Homeland Security Association (“NHSA”) recognizes the importance of protecting our users’ privacy. To that end we have created this Privacy Policy and a Spam Policy in order to demonstrate our commitment to privacy. Information on how Site content can and cannot be used is also discussed below. Please note that spam laws and regulations above and beyond NHSA’s policies may apply to commercial electronic messages sent to individuals who have elected to list their contact information on the Site.
We may occasionally amend this policy. Any new policy will automatically be effective when it is published on the Site. You should therefore return here regularly to view our most up to date policy. You should also print a copy for your records.
About NHSA
You can find details about the NHSA and its various worldwide councils on the National Homeland Security Association website (available at https://www.Nationalhomelandsecurity.org/). The site is owned and operated by the National Homeland Security Association on behalf of its affiliates and subsidiaries. NHSA is incorporated in the state of Maryland, United States (EIN:27-2039262) and its registered office is located at 201 Park Washington Court, Falls Church, Virginia, United States 22046-4527.
We refer to NHSA together with its related group entities, including its various committees, its board, and other subsidiaries as “we”, “us” or “our” in this Policy.
For the purposes of the General Date Protection Regulation (2016/679) (the “GDPR”), the Data Controller is the National Homeland Security Association, which is a 501(c) non-profit association incorporated in the State of Maryland and having its principal business address at 201 Park Washington Court, Falls Church, Virginia, United States 22046-4527.
What Information does NHSA collect?
Most of your information and data we collect (Personal Data) is provided directly by you. This may include:
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- Contact information – information such as name, job title, company name, department, email address, physical mailing address and telephone number;
- Professional information – such as your employment background, job description and related information;
- Transaction information – your contact information, the services you are interested in, your purchasing requirements, your financial information including credit card or other payment information;
- Responses to surveys – information you provide in responding to a survey on the Site, via an app or email, on the telephone or otherwise;
- Details related to event participation – special requirements such as aids and dietary needs (which will be distributed to third parties as appropriate such as caterers and facilities to prepare for your participation);
- Photographic and audio images - By registering for and by your presence at any NHSA event (conferences, courses, board, committee, commission, other group meetings, or any events offered by the association), you consent to be photographed, filmed, videotaped and/or otherwise recorded. Your registration constitutes your consent to such photography, filming and/or recording and to any use, in any and all media throughout the universe in perpetuity, of your appearance, voice and name for any purpose whatsoever in connection with the NHSA event. You understand that all photography, filming and/or recording will be done in reliance upon this consent given by you by entering the event facilities (conference rooms, board rooms, exhibit halls, convention centers, and any other venue chosen for the activity). If you do not agree to the foregoing, please do not enter the event facilities.
- Scholarship application details – necessary to evaluate and determine recipients of NHSA scholarships.
- Awards competition – data related to professional projects and accomplishments from those applying for recognition from NHSA’s annual Awards program.
We may also collect, and process information obtained through the Site or the device you are using, including:
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- Member information (including username and password);
- Location information (including GPS signals sent by a mobile device, location information gathered from social media networks or sensor or IP address data from your device;
- information from cookies, web beacons or from the internet, including your IP address, browser type, operating system, domain name, access times, which pages you visit within our Site and referring website addresses – for more on this please see the next section below on how we use your information;
- If you ask us to connect with other sites (for example if you ask us to connect with your Facebook account) we may get information that way too; and,
- We may record any telephone calls for quality assurance and training purposes, and we may record any virtual meetings such as webinars.
We may use publicly accessible information to verify information we are provided with and to manage and expand our organization.
Throughout the website there may be forms to request information and purchase or obtain products and/or services through NHSA. These forms typically ask for contact information, financial information, and demographic information. Information from these forms is used to deliver the information, products and/or services that you request. It may also be used to notify you of future NHSA programs, products, services and/or opportunities that may be of interest to you. When completing these forms, please do not supply another person’s personal data to us unless we prompt you to do so and you have received that individual’s consent to do so.
How does NHSA use your information?
We use information collected about you as outlined in this Policy.
General
Our primary purpose in collecting your Personal Data is to provide you with the services you requested and those which we believe will optimize your use of the Site and membership in NHSA. We may use your Personal Data for the following purposes:
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- To provide the information, services or support you request and related information and updates regarding NHSA and its various programs and organization events and conferences;
- To identify you, and to contact you from time to time with NHSA services and programs updates;
- To send other messages that are useful to the service we provide, including messages regarding our awards programs as well as messages from and regarding NHSA;
- To manage our relationship with you and to carry out any related administration;
- To provide personalized, targeted, or location-based content, services, and advertising from us and third parties;
- To promote services, or the services of our suppliers, including by email and via social media platforms (subject to the relevant marketing permissions);
- To compare information for accuracy, and verify it with third parties*;
- To detect, investigate and prevent activity we think may be potentially illegal, unlawful or harmful and to enforce our Policy or any other purpose referenced herein or therein*;
- To carry out research, including market research, statistical research on site traffic, sales and other commercial information to assist us in improving the services we provide to you and tailor the Site*;
- To keep track of the areas of our Site you visit, the amount of time you spend and the date and time you access our Site to enable us to tailor it to better match your interests and/or preferences.
In more legal terms, we process your Personal Data where we have your consent to do so, which you may withdraw at any time, or otherwise where this is necessity for:
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- The performance of our contract with you for the provision of our services or to take preliminary steps at your request;
- Us to fulfil our legal obligations; or,
- The purposes of the legitimate nonprofit interests pursued by NHSA or by a third party.
A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. Our legitimate interests are those indicated with an asterisk (“*”) above, and we consider that we have implemented sufficient checks and protections to ensure that your rights and interests are not unreasonably intruded on.
*However, you can object to processing on any of these bases at any time and, if you do so, we will stop processing the personal data unless we can show compelling legitimate grounds which override your rights and interests, or we need the data to establish, exercise or defend legal claims – see “Your rights” below.
Cookies
Cookies are small pieces of information that are stored by your browser on your computer’s hard drive. Our Site uses “cookies” to help you access our Site. Also, our Site’s cookies help speed up navigation, keep track of items and help to provide you with custom-tailored content. In addition, we also use cookies to remember information that you gave us so you do not have to re-enter it each time you visit our Site. We use four types of cookies, which we describe in this section.
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- Essential: cookies that are essential to provide you with services you have requested. For example, these include the cookies that make it possible for you to stay logged into your NHSA account. If you set your browser to block these cookies, then these functions and services will not work for you. In particular, we won’t be able to save your preferences about cookies.
- Performance: cookies which measure how often you visit our sites and how you use them. We use this information to get a better sense of how our users engage with our site, so that users have a better experience. For example, we collect information about which of our pages are most frequently visited, and by which types of users. We also use third-party cookies to help with performance. For example, the Google Analytics cookie gives us information such as your journey between pages and whether you have downloaded anything.
- Functionality: cookies that are used to recognize you and remember your preferences or settings when you return to our site, so that we can provide you with a more personalized experience.
- Advertising: cookies that are used to collect information about your visit to our site, the content you have viewed, the links you have followed and information about your browser, device and your IP address. We have set out more details on this below.
These various technologies are used in analyzing trends, administering the Site, tracking users’ movements around the Site and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies on an individual as well as aggregated basis. As is true of most websites, we gather some information automatically and store it in log files. This information includes IP addresses, browser type, internet service provider, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and clickstream data.
Cookie consent
In most cases we will need your consent in order to use cookies on the Site. Exceptions to this apply such as where the cookie is essential in order for us to provide you with a service you have requested (e.g. to enable you to put items in your shopping basket and use our check-out process. If you visit our Site when your browser is set to accept cookies, we will interpret this as an indication that you consent to our use of cookies and other similar technologies as described in this policy. If you change your mind in the future about letting us use cookies, you can modify the settings of your browser to reject cookies or disable cookies completely. If you do not want to accept cookies, you can change your browser settings so that cookies are not accepted. If you do this, please be aware that you may lose some of the functionality of this Site.
Who may use your information?
We are committed to keeping your e-mail address confidential. However, subject to your permission, we share information that may be of interest to you from time-to-time from third parties for purposes of marketing programs and services.
We may also disclose your personal data to enforce our policies, to comply with our legal obligations or in the interests of security, public interest or law enforcement in any country where we have entities or affiliates. For example, we may respond to a request by a law enforcement agency or regulatory or governmental authority. We may also disclose data in connection with actual or proposed litigation, or to protect our property, security, people and other rights or interests.
We share your information with third parties who help deliver our services to you. Examples include hosting our web servers, analyzing data, providing marketing assistance, and providing customer service. These companies will have access to your personal information as necessary to perform their functions, but they may not use that data for any other purpose.
You may have accessed our Site through a hyperlink from the website of one of our subsidiaries or trading partners. If so, you consent to your personal details and purchase information, including behavioral patterns, being shared with that trading partner in accordance with our contractual relationship with them.
If NHSA merges with or is acquired by another organization, and/or if its assets are transferred to a third party, your personal information, as a valuable asset, may also be transferred to the acquirer or the entity resulting from the merger, even if they are not in the same line of business as us. Our member database could be sold separately from the rest of the organization, in whole or in a number of parts. Potential purchasers or merger parties and their advisors may have limited access to data as part of the merger or acquisition process. However, use of your personal information will remain subject to this Policy. Similarly, your personal information may be passed on to a successor in interest in the unlikely event of a liquidation, bankruptcy or administration.
Please remember that when you share information publicly on the Site, for example a comment on a blog post, it may be indexable by search engines, including Google, which may mean that the information is made public.
Third party links and services
The Site may use and contain links to third parties’ websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of those websites or services. Therefore, please read carefully any privacy policies on those links or websites before either agreeing to their terms or using those websites. If you have asked us to share data with third party sites (such as social media sites), their servers may not be secure. Note that, despite the measures taken by us and the third parties we engage, the internet is not secure. As a result, others may nevertheless unlawfully intercept or access private transmissions or data.
Children’s privacy
The NHSA Site is not directed to children under the age of 13. I you are not 13 years of age or older, you are not permitted to use the NHSA Site. NHSA does not knowingly collect Personal Data or information from children under the age of 13. If we learn that Personal Data of persons under the age of 13 has been collected through the NHSA Site, we will take prompt and appropriate measures to delete this information. If you are a parent or guardian and discover that your child or a minor under the age of 13 has posted, submitted or otherwise communicated Personal Data to the NHSA Site without your knowledge or consent, then you may alert NHSA by:
- Contacting our headquarters by emailing your request to info@Nationalhomelandsecurity.org.
How does NHSA protect your information?
We take what we consider to be appropriate technical and organizational measures to guard against unauthorized or unlawful processing of your Personal Data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, your Personal Data. While no system is completely secure, we believe the measures implemented by the Site reduce our vulnerability to security problems to a level appropriate to the type of data involved. We have security measures in place to protect our user database and access to this database is restricted internally. However, it remains your responsibility:
- Where you have a member’s account for the Site:
- To log off or exit from Site when not using it;
- To ensure no-one else uses the Site while your device is logged on to the Site (including by logging on to your device through a mobile, Wi-Fi or shared access connection you are using);
- To keep your password or other access information secret. Your password and log in details are personal to you and should not be given to anyone else or used to provide shared access for example over a network. You should use a password which is unique to your use of the Site – do not use the same password as you use for another site or email account; and,
- To maintain good internet security. For example, if your email account or Facebook account is compromised this could allow access to your account with us if you have given us those details and/or permitted access through those accounts. If your email account is compromised, it could be used to ask us to reset a password and gain access to your account with us. You should keep all of your account details secure. If you think that any of your accounts has been compromised you should change your account credentials with us, and in particular make sure any compromised account does not allow access to your account with us. You should also tell us as soon as you can so that we can try to help you keep your account secure and if necessary, warn anyone else who could be affected.
Where is your information stored and processed?
Your Personal Data is generally stored on servers located in the United States. If you are located in another country or jurisdiction, you should be aware that once your Personal Data is submitted through the NHSA site, it will be transferred to our servers in the United States and that the United States does not have uniform data protection laws in place.
When you became a member of NHSA you agreed that we may transfer your Personal Data to countries outside the United States and European Economic Area. We will put in place appropriate security measures to safeguard your Personal Data where any such transfer is made. If we transfer your Personal Data outside your country, we will take steps to ensure that your privacy rights continue to be protected in compliance with applicable data protection law and this Policy.
Marketing communications
If you have given permission, we may contact you about any of the following:
- NHSA awards programs;
- NHSA updates;
- Communities of practice;
- Updates on our scholarship program, as well as updates specific to your scholarship application status, and notifications of donation campaigns;
- Existing member updates;
- Membership renewal reminders (only for existing members);
- Invitations to webinars and teleconferences designed to enhance your membership experience and/or professional practice;
- Invitations to participate in our initiated and/or supported research;
- Information about our industry and professional research and education; and/or,
- Events and educational programs and opportunities;
- Special discounts and other benefits available to you through your association with NHSA;
- Newsletters and other NHSA publications.
In compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR, and CASL all email sent from our organization will clearly state who the email is from and provide clear information on how to contact the sender. In addition, all email messages will also contain concise information on how to remove yourself from our mailing list so that you receive no further email communication from us.
NHSA will maintain the information you send via email in accordance with applicable domestic and international law.
You should have a prior relationship with the person receiving your email. If you prefer not to receive any direct marketing communications from us and/or our partners, you can opt out at any time by emailing us at info@Nationalhomelandsecurity.org. See further “Your rights,” below.
How long do we keep your information?
We will retain your personal data only as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy, or as is required by applicable law, and then we will delete it.
Change in terms of privacy
NHSA reserves the right to alter its privacy policies. Any changes to the policy will be posted on this page. This Site is controlled and operated by NHSA from its offices within the United States. NHSA makes no representations that materials, information, or content available on or through this Site are appropriate or available for use in other locations, and access to them from territories where such materials, information, or content are illegal is prohibited. Those who choose to access this Site from other locations do so on their own volition and are responsible for compliance with applicable local laws.
Site content
You may access, download and print materials on this website for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from this website without first obtaining written consent from an authorized representative of NHSA. Furthermore, you may not use the materials found on this website on any other websites or in a networked environment without first obtaining written consent from NHSA.
All materials on this Site (as well as the organization and layout of the Site) are owned and copyrighted by the National Homeland Security Association. © Copyright National Homeland Security Association (NHSA). All rights reserved. No reproduction, distribution, or transmission of the copyrighted materials at this Site is permitted without the written permission of NHSA.
Your rights
Correction and Removal
If any of the information that we have about you is incorrect, or if you wish to have information (including your Personal Data) removed from our records, you may do so by:
- Contacting our headquarters by emailing your request to info@Nationalhomelandsecurity.org.
Opting Out
As explained above, you have the right to opt-out of receiving marketing communications from NHSA and any authorized third parties. In addition, to the extent permitted by the laws of your country, you may have the right to object to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes. If your objection is not to direct marketing in general, but to direct marketing by a particular channel e.g. email or telephone, please specify the channel to which you are objecting.
Your European Rights
For European Residents only, you have the right to ask NHSA not to process your Personal Data for marketing purposes. You may exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your Personal Data.
Further, to the extent permitted by the laws of your country, you may also have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, be forgotten, or object to processing of, or request data portability of the personal data collected about you subject to some conditions and exceptions. You can find out more about these rights in the EU by reading the General Data Protection Regulation here: http://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html. In the EU you also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection regulator there.
NHSA contact details are below if you wish to inquire about any of those rights or would like to submit a request.
For Residents of California
For residents of California only, Section 1798.83 of the California Civil Code, as amended, requires select businesses to disclose policies relating to the sharing of certain categories of your Personal Data with third parties.
If you reside in California and have provided your Personal Data to NHSA, you may request from NHSA a disclosure of what information we share with third parties for use in direct marketing, who those third parties are and what they do. Such requests must be submitted to NHSA at info@Nationalhomelandsecurity.org. You also have the right to prevent disclosure of your personal information.
How do you contact NHSA?
If you have any questions about this Policy, the practices of this Site, or your dealings with this Site, we encourage you to contact us using the following details:
National Homeland Security Association
201 Park Washington Court
Falls Church, Virginia 22046-4527
United States
info@Nationalhomelandsecurity.org
Policy as of 06-06-2022.
