Terms & Conditions

The World Institute of Nuclear Security (WINS) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This is why we want you to know that we collect personal information about you when you visit our website, become a member or apply to attend a training course or event. We have written this policy to explain exactly when we collect this information, why we ask for it, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, and how we keep it secure.

We may change this policy from time to time, so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you are aware of—and agree with—any changes. By checking the box when signing up and using our website, you are agreeing to be bound by this policy.

Please send any questions you may have about our privacy practices to info@wins.org. You can also write: Office Manager, Landstrasser Hauptstrasse 1/18, 1030 Vienna, Austria.

Who are we?

WINS is a non-profit, international non-governmental organisation headquartered at Landstrasser Hauptstrasse 1/18, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Our Vision is that all nuclear and other radiological materials and facilities are effectively secured by demonstrably competent professionals applying best practice to achieve operational excellence.

How do we collect information from you?
We obtain information about you when you use our website, contact us about products and services, apply to become a member of WINS, register for newsletters or communications, or apply to participate in a workshop or training course.

What type of information do we collect?
If you visit the website as a non-member without using a login, we collect standard website analytics data, including your IP address and the webpages you visited. This allows us to analyse and improve the quality of our website.

If you apply to join WINS as a member, we ask for the following information:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Gender (select)
  • Age Range (select)
  • Nationality (select)
  • Job Category (select)
  • Area of expertise (select)
  • Job Title
  • Organisation Type (select)
  • Country of Organisation (select)
  • Organisation Name
  • Website
  • Address (Street, City, Country, Postcode)
  • Telephone Number
  • How will you contribute to WINS?

If you apply for a scholarship for a WINS Academy course, we ask for additional information to help assess your suitability for the scholarship. The information we currently request includes:

  • Course(s) to be taken (select)
  • Academic degrees you have earned
  • Professional experience
  • Reason for doing the course
  • Qualifications and skills
  • Relevant training courses you have already taken
  • Languages you speak and your fluency
  • Your awards and publications
  • Whether you were referred by someone
  • Additional information

If you apply for a WINS event and you are not a member of WINS, we ask for the following information. (We also encourage you to join WINS.)

  • Name
  • Email
  • Gender
  • Country
  • Organisation
  • Job Title

How do we use your information?
We may use your information to:

  • Process an application that you have made to join WINS, apply for a WINS Academy course, attend an event, etc.
  • Carry out the obligations arising from any contracts we have entered into
  • Seek your views or comments on the services we provide, including sending you a questionnaire
  • Notify you of changes to our services
  • Send you communications that you have requested or that may be of interest to you. Examples could include information about our workshops, publications, news stories and other WINS-related information
  • Process a grant or job application
  • Analyse our membership database

WINS Academy
We need to know your name, address, email and telephone number to correspond with you, mail you a hard copy of the textbook, etc.

We ask for your nationality, age and gender to collect statistics on who is enrolling in the Academy courses. This helps us validate how well we are carrying out our goal of building nuclear security management capacity in countries around the world. It also helps us better understand and address any gender/diversity gaps that might exist.

If you are applying for funding, we need to understand your professional role and your qualifications/experience to help justify the cost of the scholarship we provide.

We also need to understand what you hope to achieve by doing the course(s) and how this will contribute to your professional development. We follow up on this after you receive certification so we can better understand how the Academy courses are impacting your professional development and career.

When you become a WINS member, we provide a member dashboard for you. This contains your personal profile settings. When you join the Alumni network (The Hive) we ask you to review for your engagement with other alumni.

We record key dates when applications are received, processed and approved. We use forms to help standardise the data entries (using drop-down selection menus) to avoid free-form text entries.

We regularly report on the progress being made by the WINS Academy to the organisations that support and fund us; consequently, we need to have appropriate and accurate data and metrics.

Recommended IT requirements for completing any of the WINS Academy programmes via the WINS website

  • Device and hardware: Computing devices (laptops, desktops) are required to register for the academy programme and access the learning management system. For requirements for online proctored exams, please refer to the information from Pearson OnVUE here: https://home.pearsonvue.com/wins/onvue
  • Operating systems: Using the newest stable operating system version from Windows or Mac OS is recommended.
  • Web browsers: Using the latest versions of Chrome Firefox or Safari is recommended. JavaScript should be enabled for the browser. Internet cookies should be enabled and popup blockers must be disabled.
  • Internet connection: A reliable connection (WiFi or cable internet) with modern internet speeds is suggested. For optimal performance, a reliable and stable connection speed with a minimum of 3 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up is required.

WINS Events
In addition to the above, some applicants for WINS events (such as workshops and round tables) are not WINS Members. In addition, some WINS events are by invitation only and have specific criteria for people who would like to attend. Consequently, we need to collect some basic personal information so we are able to evaluate applications.

In addition, some WINS events are supported logistically by external partners, such as CRDF Global, and they ask for comparable data during the registration process.

Occasionally, scholarship applicants who would like to attend an event also request that we make their travel arrangements (flights, accommodation, etc.) for them. In such cases we (or our external partners) require the information necessary to fulfil this request. This usually requires applicants to provide their passport details to us as well.

Some WINS events include a visit to a nuclear-related facility. When this occurs, the host may require personal information about attendees—in accordance with the host’s own regulatory requirements—before authorising access to the facility. In such cases, WINS may be asked to manage the collection and transmission of this information. Doing so may require WINS to ask for a copy of the participant’s passport.

Special requirements from funders
Some WINS events are sponsored by funders who request details about the individuals who want to attend the event. They may also wish to restrict their scholarship funds to certain individuals who have specific backgrounds, skills and experience or to people from certain countries.

In addition, they may require us to send a list of scholarship applicants to them, along with the applicants’ personal data, so they can make the final decision about who is approved for a scholarship. (Note that such funders may be located outside the European Union.) As a result, all applicants must agree in advance to these approvals before the application can be processed.

Servers located outside the European Union
It is possible that our servers may from time to time be located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have data protection laws similar to the EU. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storage or processing. If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with such services.

How long do we retain your personal information?
We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information in our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant agreement between us. We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis and delete information that is no longer applicable.

Who else has access to your information?
We never sell or rent your information to third parties. Nor do we share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third-parties with whom we work
We may pass your information to our third-party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf. For example, our website is hosted by a third-party contractor, as are our IT systems, which are managed through a datacentre.

When we use third-party service providers, we have arrangements in place that require them to keep personal information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. However, we would have to share personal information if required to do so by law or regulation, by a court order, or for the purposes of preventing a crime, such as fraud or the violation of sanctions. We may transfer your personal information if we’re under a duty to disclose it, to enforce or apply our terms of use, or to protect the rights, property or safety of our supporters and customers.

If you use our secure online payment pages, your payment will be processed by a third-party payment processor who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us. Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected with 28-bit encryption on SSL. (When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of your web browser.)

We work closely with various third-party product providers to bring you a range of quality and reliable products and services. This includes Pearson VUE—the largest commercial testing company in the world—who makes our certification tests available in more than 180 countries. When you enquire about or purchase one or more of these products, the relevant third-party product provider will use your details to provide you with information and carry out the obligations arising from any contracts you have entered into with them.

We also provide data required for digital credentials (badges) to Open Badge Factory (OBF) for you to be able to share your WINS achievements.

In some cases, they will act as a data controller of your information. Therefore, we advise you to read their Privacy policy carefully. These third-party product providers will also share your information with us, which we will use in accordance with this Privacy policy.

You can choose how much information you want to receive from us
You have a choice about whether or not you want to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive communications from us about the important work we do on Nuclear Security and our membership and alumni services, you can simply tick the relevant boxes on the online forms we use to ask for your permission.

We will never contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us via email: info@wins.org

Accessing and updating your information
The accuracy of your information is important to us. If your email, street address, telephone number, etc. changes, please log in to the members’ area of the WINS website and update your information. Alternatively, you can also email us at info@wins.org, or write to us at Landstrasser Hauptstrasse 1/18, 1030 Vienna, Austria.

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information WINS has about you at any time.

Security precautions put in place to protect loss, misuse or alteration of your information
When you give us personal information, we take steps to help ensure that it’s treated securely. Non-sensitive details (e.g. your email address) are transmitted normally over the internet, which can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, although we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk.

Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure it is secure on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password that enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone at any time.

Profiling
We may analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information that is relevant to you.

Use of cookies
Like many other websites, the WINS website uses cookies. These are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow the website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns, but they do not identify you as an individual.

For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us improve our website and deliver a better, more personalised service. It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to do this on your computer, visit our Cookies policy. Note that turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

Browser recommendations
WINS keeps our website optimised for use with the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Using other browsers may result in some functions not working as required. For full functionality, please consider using one of these three optimised browsers.

Links to other websites
Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.
In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site. We recommend that you check the policy of that third-party site.

Under 18
Individuals must be at least 18 years old to become a WINS member, attend a workshop, or enrol in the WINS Academy.

Website recording
Our website uses the website recording service HotJar, which was developed by HotJar Limited. HotJar may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling and text keyed into website forms. The information collected does not include bank details or any sensitive personal data. Data collected by HotJar from the WINS website is for WINS’ internal use only. The information collected is used to improve our website usability and is stored and used for aggregated and statistical reporting.

Review of this policy
We review this policy regularly. It was last updated in July 2023.