by Mark Ford
Vivit Board Director
Community Chairperson
Hello everyone, as your Community Director, I would like to give you an update on a topic that has a renewed level of interest recently, especially for our European members: Membership Data.
Vivit has always taken great care of your identifiable member data by keeping it secure and only using it to send you email correspondence. We never share your contact information with anyone, not even Micro Focus or HP/HPE before that. We value you as a Vivit member and we treat your data with the utmost care and respect.
European legislation known as GDPR will take effect in May 2018 and further clarifies how identifiable information can be stored and utilized for citizens of the EU. We are looking into the new policy to make sure Vivit is compliant. GDPR provides good guidelines to follow and other areas of the globe may require them at some point as well. We’ll be implementing the following for our Vivit members in the EU and in most cases, globally as well. This includes:
- Individuals need to provide consent for using their data (opt-in vs. opt-out)
- Individuals must be able to easily update their data and have an easy way to have their identifiable data removed (right to be forgotten)
- Organizations must inform members explicitly how they accept, store, and utilize member data (privacy policy)
- Organizations must remind members periodically to keep their data current (we already do this annually with our Knock a Little Louder campaign)
- Organizations must store member data in a secure format and report data breaches within 72 hours (we use YourMembership.com and will report as soon as they inform us)
To facilitate the opt-in consent requirement for GDPR, over the next few months, we’ll email all members who have specified a residence in the EU to obtain their consent. Other items will be phased in on the Vivit website as we determine the best way to implement them.
Thank you for being a valued member of Vivit! If you have any questions, please let me know.
