We – INCOSE (hereinafter: “we”, “us”, “our”) – provide you, the visitor of our websites https://www.incose.org/; https://systemsengineeringtools.com; https://sebokwiki.org/; https://sevisionweb.incose.org/; https://portal.incose.org/; https://careers.incose.org/ (hereinafter jointly referred to as “Website”) with this Privacy Statement to inform you about how we process your personal data as well as your rights related to such processing.
We may modify this Privacy Statement at any time. To see when this Privacy Statement was last updated, please refer to the “Last updated” date indicated at the bottom of this page.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, please contact us by email at [email protected].
1. Controller
The entity that is responsible for the processing of your personal data is the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), a global not-for-profit membership organization with registered offices at 7670 Opportunity Road, Ste. 220, San Diego, CA 92111-2222 (United States of America).
You can contact us as indicated in section 6 below.
2. Processing of your personal data
INCOSE processes personal data to connect systems engineering professionals with educational, networking, and career-advancement opportunities in the interest of developing the global community of systems engineers and systems approaches to problems. More detailed information about such processing can be found in the sections below.
2.1. Website
It is not our intention to collect or otherwise process children’s personal data through this Website.
We process your personal data collected through our Website to enable access to our Website and deliver content and functionalities correctly. This processing is based on our legitimate interest.
Additionally, we may process your personal data to preserve our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of our partners or others if and when your use of our Website or more in general, your interactions with us, can be considered a violation of any applicable terms of use or any right of us or others, a threat to the security or integrity of our Website, a danger to our Website’s underlying systems, or as inappropriate or illegal behavior. For the processing of your personal data for this purpose, we rely on our legitimate interest of keeping our assets and business, including our Website, safe from misuse and illegal activity and to enforce our policies.
If you want more information on how we process personal data via cookies and similar technologies, you are kindly referred to our Cookie Policy.
2.2. Membership management
We process personal data for membership management purposes. Therefore, your personal information may be shared with Chapter Leaders and Corporate Advisory Board (CAB) representatives.
For more information on our membership formulas, please visit https://www.incose.org/engage-with-incose/join-incose.
2.3. Education and certification
We process personal data in the context of our education and certification offerings. For more information, please visit https://www.incose.org/learn for education, and https://www.incose.org/certification for certification opportunities.
2.4. Events and networking
We process personal data to manage events and other networking opportunities. For more information, please visit https://www.incose.org/events.
2.5. Newsletter
We process your personal data to keep you informed of novelties, events and services offered by us and our chapters. If you are an existing Member (for more information on our Membership formulas, please visit https://www.incose.org/engage-with-incose/join-incose), we will keep you informed based on our legitimate interest to stay in touch with you, and to market, promote and overall successful roll-out of our products and services.
If you are not an existing Member, and you subscribe to our Newsletter, we will collect your contact information for such purpose. In this case we will obtain your consent in order to send you relevant marketing communications to keep you up to date about our current and future activities.
In both cases, you will of course have the option to opt out from future communications.
2.6. Communication
If you contact us by email, phone, or any other means, we collect the information you provide to us. This may include your name, telephone number, email address, and any other personal data you choose to provide. We also process the content of your communication, the practical details of this communication (such as with whom you corresponded, and the date and time), and, where necessary and proportionate, publicly available information about you.
In this case, we use your personal data to provide relevant customer service, respond to inquiries and fulfil requests. To the extent your communication with us requires the processing of your personal data, we rely on the performance of our agreement to process your personal data.
2.7. Compliance
In addition to the processing of your personal data for the purposes set out above, we may process all of your personal data for compliance purposes as follows:
- We may process your personal data for internal audits and to otherwise verify that our internal processes function as intended and are compliant with applicable laws, regulatory requirements, or contractual obligations. We need to process your personal data for this purpose to protect our legitimate interests in carrying out our business and to keep our assets and business safe from misuse and illegal activity and to enforce our policies.
- We may process your personal data for informing others in the context of corporate operations, such as a possible merger or any other form of reorganization. For the processing of your personal data for this purpose, we rely on our legitimate interest to conduct our business in good faith.
- We use your personal data to comply with our legal obligations, such as obligations under applicable anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing legislation. We need to process your personal data for this purpose for us to comply with our legal obligations.
- We process your personal data to comply with any reasonable request from competent law enforcement agents or representatives, judicial authorities, and governmental agencies or bodies, including competent data protection authorities. The processing of your personal data for this purpose is necessary for us to comply with our legal obligations. In the same way we may share your personal data upon our own initiative with competent authorities if there are justified suspicions of an unlawful act or crime committed by you through your use of our Website or any other interaction with us. For the processing of your personal data for this purpose, we rely on our legitimate interest to assist competent authorities in preventing or investigating illegal activities.
3. Sources of your personal data
We obtain all information mentioned above directly from you or from our participating chapters, with whom we have entered into a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA). In some cases, we may also receive further information about you from our chapters, some of which are independent not-for-profits.
4. Recipients of your personal data and data transfers
INCOSE is a U.S.-based global organization with international chapters. There are various degrees of affiliation between the global organization and its local chapters, some of which are independent not-for-profits. Your personal data will only be exchanged between INCOSE and its chapters if it is required to provide you with the goods and/or services that you expect from INCOSE and/or its chapters.
We only share personal data with others if it is legally required or if there is another legal basis for doing so.
Your personal data is processed by third-party processors that operate on our behalf. We carefully select our processors and contractually require them to maintain the safety and integrity of your personal data. Our processors are only authorized to process your personal data according to our explicit written instructions.
As a U.S.-based organization, we may transfer your personal data to others which are located outside of the European Economic Area, such as any country where we have partners or service providers.
If and insofar as applicable data protection legislation imposed restrictions related to such transfers, we will implement appropriate safeguards with regard to the processing of your personal data.
To obtain more information on such safeguards, please send a request via email to [email protected].
5. Your rights as a data subject
You have the right to request access to your personal data that we process.
You have the right to obtain the rectification of any inaccurate personal data about you. Your rectification request must be supported by evidence of the inaccuracies in the data you are seeking to have corrected.
Where we process your personal data based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw such consent at any time.
Under the conditions foreseen in the applicable data protection legislation, you have the right to obtain the erasure of your personal data.
Under the conditions foreseen in the applicable data protection legislation, you have the right to obtain the restriction of processing of your personal data.
If you receive our marketing communications, you can change your preferences for receiving such communications by clicking the “unsubscribe” link provided in our communications or object to direct marketing, including profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing, by sending us an email at [email protected].
Where we process your personal data based on our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data on grounds relating to your particular situation. However, you can always object to processing for direct marketing at any time without any charge or justification.
If we process your personal data with your consent or to fulfill a contract and the processing is carried out by automated means, you have the right to receive the personal data you provided to us in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format and to transfer this information to another controller.
We do not use automated decision-making processes that have a legal or similarly significant effect on you.
If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data, please inform us by sending an email to [email protected]. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.
6. How to contact us
To exercise any of the rights mentioned above, you can send a request via email to [email protected]. Please state clearly which right you wish to exercise and provide reasons or proof to support your request if required. We will acknowledge receipt of your request and proceed to review it. If your request is valid, we will honor it as soon as possible. In case we have doubts about your identity, we may request additional information to verify it.
Last updated: 24 March 2025