Privacy Policy

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Last Updated: January 10, 2024

The National Cyber Scholarship Foundation supports your privacy rights and we commit to holding the minimum amount of data that we can from you.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect data, why we collect it, how it is used, who has access to it, and how long it is kept for. By using this website or completing the National Cyber Scholarship Application Form, you consent to the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation processing your data.

We may need to revise this Privacy Policy from time to time. If the changes are significant, we will notify you by email.

Who is holding my data?

Your information is being collected by the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation to help run and deliver information security talent assessment and training programs, and award prizes. The programs are delivered by the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation, a charitable foundation based in the United States of America at 8300 Douglas Avenue, Suite 800, Dallas, TX 75225, and CyberStart Limited, based in the United Kingdom at The Old Bull Pens, Sezincote, Moreton-In-Marsh, Gloucestershire, GL56 9AW. These parties respectively act as a processor and controller of your data, which means storing your provided data, analyzing it or deleting it.

These programs and the prior mentioned parties will maintain information that you provide to us, and data collected during your interaction with the provided services. This is collected for the operational purposes of security and safeguarding, but primarily for the running of the talent identification and training outlined on this website.

We use a company called Active Campaign to send you important information about the program. This is information that you need to participate in the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation’s programs, including CyberStart America, Cyber FastTrack and the Cyber Foundations Academy.

What information do you collect about me?

The types of information we hold about you include:

  • When you registered for the CyberStart America or Cyber FastTrack program as a student, the program registration form collected your first name, last name, email address, date of birth, school/college information, state information, your gender, race and ethnicity, whether or not you are a member of JROTC/CAP (for CyberStart America only), and whether you wanted to join any community groups. This information is shared with the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation (as outlined in the Terms and Privacy Policies on the CyberStart America and Cyber FastTrack websites).

  • Progress information from your use of the CyberStart platform during the CyberStart America or Cyber FastTrack program, and performance information relating to any other program (e.g. CyberPatriot, picoCTF) that you have provided to us directly.

  • When completing the Scholarship Application Form, you will be given the chance to update/correct any of the personal information you previously provided when you registered for the CyberStart America and Cyber FastTrack, and will be required to provide the following additional information:

    • Permanent address (street address, town/city, state, ZIP code) and telephone number - this information is required to process any scholarship awards

    • Contact details for a person (member of staff) that can verify your enrollment at your school/college

    • Consent for your information to be processed by the NCSF and shared with any organizations that are awarding prizes

    • Optional consent for your full name and school to be published in a list of NCSF winners on the website, and/or shared with your state governor for the purpose of recognizing your achievement

    • Optional consent for your full name, school, testimonials, achievements and progress to be shared in PR and marketing outreach for the program (if this consent is provided, you may be contacted by the NCSF to invite you to participate in additional publicity opportunities)

    • Optional consent for your name and email address to be shared with Badgr so that we can award any official Open Badges you have qualified for

    • Optional consent for your name and email address to be shared with Handshake if you qualify to be part of the NCSF internship initiative

    • (if under 18) Contact details for a parent/guardian who will be required to confirm your information-sharing choices.

  • Information on how you use and experience this website and its forms, including server logging that may contain basic data such as IP address, date and time, the URL or path of the resource or file accessed, browser information, or error information.

  • Marketing Information including tracking and cookie data that we collect when you use our website.

Who are you sharing my personal data with?

For the purpose of delivering application services, data storage, and reporting

  • We use Amazon Web Services to host the NCSF scholarship application service and store data.

  • We use Tableau to analyze and report on NCSF scholarship applications, progress, and outcomes data.

  • If you choose to verify your school/college enrollment by uploading a transcript, you will be sent a personalized link to upload this via the third-party service Typeform (https://www.typeform.com/). Your transcript document will be stored in Typeform’s databases until it has been validated by the NCSF team, after which it will be deleted. The personalized link allows the NCSF team to connect the transcript to the correct applicant using an anonymized UUID, without storing the document alongside any other personal information in this third-party service.

 

For the purpose of awarding prizes

SANS Institute

If you are selected to receive a scholarship for SANS Foundations training and the GFACT certification attempt, or any other SANS course or Academy program, your information (full name, email address, and permanent address, to ship hard copy course materials) will be passed to SANS Institute to enroll you in the course.

Badgr

If you provide consent for your data to be shared with Badgr and you are selected as a Semifinalist, Finalist, Scholar, or Scholar with Honors, your information (name and email address) will be uploaded to Badgr in order to award you an official Open Badge to recognize your achievement.

Handshake

If you provide consent for your data to be shared with Handshake and you have passed the GFACT Certification exam, your information (name and email address) may be uploaded to Handshake in order to invite you to create a profile under the NCSF organisation, which allows you to access curated internship and job opportunities.

NCSF’s named partners

NCSF’s named partners are:

  • CSA State Taskforce for Alabama (Lead organization: Alabama State Department of Education - alabamaachieves.org)

  • CSA State Taskforce for Florida (Lead organization: STEM2Hub - stem2hub.org)

  • CSA State Taskforce for Georgia (Lead organization: University of North Georgia - ung.edu)

  • CSA State Taskforce for Texas (Lead organization: Texas Advanced Computing Center TACC - tacc.utexas.edu)

  • CSA State Taskforce for Virginia (Lead organization: CodeVA - codevirginia.org) 

If you provide consent for your data to be shared with any/all of the NCSF’s partners listed above, then your personal information (Full Name, Email Address), school/college information (School/College Name - including city and state, Grade/Year of study) and your CyberStart points score will be shared with the selected partner only in the event that you are likely to meet their selection criteria for any award that they are offering. Selection criteria for each partnership award are stated in the NCSF Terms of Service.

By consenting to share your personal information with any/all of NCSF’s partners, you also consent that those partners may share your name, email, and achievement with your school district administrators.

For recognition of your performance

If you provide consent for your full name and school to be published in a list of NCSF winners on the website, this will be published at www.nationalcyberscholarship.org by the end of March 2024. This list will be publicly accessible from the date of publication. If you choose to remain anonymous, your school will be included in the list with your name listed as “anonymous”. The NCSF team will be unable to add or remove names from this list after its publication.

If you do not provide consent for your full name and school to be published in a list of NCSF winners on the website, but do agree that it can be shared with your state governor for the purpose of recognizing your achievement, your full name and school will be provided to your state governor (on request) as part of a list of state winners from February 2024.

For verification of your eligibility for awards

It is a condition of participation in an NCSF-funded program, and for any prizes to be awarded, that you are enrolled in a high school or college in the USA, a U.S. territory, or a DoDEA school overseas.

On the Scholarship Application Form, you are required to provide the name, job role and email address of a member of staff at your school/college, who can verify that you are enrolled in the school/college you have listed. You are also permitted to self-verify your school/college enrollment through the submission of a recent school/college transcript via a personalized Typeform link that we will send to you by email. If a transcript is not received within 24 hours from form submission (or by the application deadline, whichever is sooner), your nominated school/college contact will receive an email request to verify your school/college enrollment by completing a short form. We may also email your nominated school/college contact if any further validation is needed after submitting a transcript, and may later inform them if you are awarded a prize.

If you are a high school student, we will share your full name, email, school information and grade with your nominated contact for the purposes of confirming your school enrollment and eligibility for scholarships.

If you are a college student, we will share your full name, email, college information, and current level of study with your nominated contact for the purpose of confirming your college enrollment and eligibility for scholarships.

If you are under 18

If you are under 18 years old when submitting the Scholarship Application Form, we will need additional confirmation of your data-sharing choices from a parent/guardian. The Scholarship Application Form asks you to provide the name and email address of a parent/guardian if you are under 18. Your nominated parent/guardian will be emailed your full name and a copy of your data-sharing choices shortly after you submit the form, and will be asked to validate that they are happy to support your choices. They can contact the NCSF by email on support@nationalcyberscholarship.org if they have any concerns.

Your Scholarship Application Form cannot be processed until we have this parent/guardian validation on record, so it is recommended to discuss and agree your data-sharing choices with your parent/guardian before submitting the form, and ensure they are ready to respond to the validation request shortly after, to avoid any delay in processing your application.

Other purposes

We will always ask for your permission before sending your information to any other organization, or for any use case other than what is outlined above. We may on occasion offer you invitations to access or join third party services and/or platforms that may be of interest to you as a participant of a NCSF-funded program. Your use of these services is entirely optional and will not affect your access to or eligibility for NCSF programs or prizes. We may send you information related to our programs and further suitable opportunities for you, which you may terminate at your discretion.

Consent

We get your information from:

  • Your Scholarship Application Form

  • Program registration forms for the CyberStart America and Cyber FastTrack programs

  • Your use of the websites and program materials, including the CyberStart platform

  • Details of your progress in the program.

For us to process your data we need to get your consent or permission to use your information on behalf of all those involved. We can't consider you for any prizes through the program and keep you up to date without your registration information.

Whether you choose to join or leave the program is entirely up to you. The only effect of asking us to delete your information would be that you are no longer able to be a member of any NCSF-funded programs or be considered for any prizes. You are entitled to do this at any point in support of your right to be forgotten.

You must meet the program eligibility criteria in order to register, including the criteria that you are of an age which can consent to provide your data. For this reason, we ask for your date of birth. If you are under 18, we may need validation of your data-sharing consent from your parent/guardian.

We've tried to make this notice easy to read, but you can always contact the Data Protection Officer via support@nationalcyberscholarship.org who will help explain things further and will answer your questions.

Leaving the program and removing your information

If you change your mind about allowing us to use your information, you simply need to tell us by emailing support@nationalcyberscholarship.org. We will then take you through a couple of quick steps to confirm you want to delete your information and leave the program.

We'll update you when this has been done, or in exceptional circumstances if we can't do this.

Why do you need my information anyway?

We need it to run the program outlined on this site. The National Cyber Scholarship Foundation and CyberStart Limited will need your data to run the program, to assess eligibility, to award prizes and to celebrate success.

If you don't want us to hold your information, you will no longer be able to participate in the program, and we will delete your records from the system.

What security measures are you taking?

We carry out regular security assessments to make sure your information is secure. We follow all the standard industry practices to make sure we hold your information as securely as possible.

Security incidences

We will always inform you as quickly as possible if we discovery any security incidence that has affected your data. We will take all action that we can to reduce risks and we will let you know if you need to take any action to protect yourself as a result.

How long will the information be held?

We keep your information for five years or until you ask us to delete it, if this is sooner, and you wish to leave the program. If the circumstances arise where we need to keep the data longer, we will tell you and explain why.

What about my other rights?

You have a right to have a copy of the information which we hold on you or to transfer your information. You can make a request for a copy of your data through support by emailing support@nationalcyberscholarship.org.

What if I want more information or I want to complain?

If at any time you want further information, or you need help understanding what you can and cannot request, or if you want to make a complaint, the Data Protection Officer can help you with this.

You can be asked to be put in contact with our Data Protection Officer via our support channels. Please email support@nationalcyberscholarship.org and ask to be put in contact with the Data Protection Officer.

If you still aren't happy with our response you can complain to your local data protection authority. 

 

Contact us

If you have any queries related to the National Cyber Scholarship Foundation, please contact us on hello@nationalcyberscholarship.org.