How Sterling Academy handles your details

Who we are

Sterling Academy is the online training service of Stearling International Consulting FZE, trading as Sterling International Consulting, Creative Tower, Creative City, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates ("Sterling", "we"). Privacy contact: privacy@sterling-grc.com.

Two ways you may be here

• Your organisation enrolled you. Your organisation decides why your details are used for training and is responsible for them (the controller). Sterling handles your details on your organisation's instructions (the processor), under a data processing agreement with it.
• You bought a course yourself. Sterling is responsible for your details (the controller).

What we hold about you

• Your full name and e-mail address.
• If your organisation provided them: your employee number, department and site.
• The courses you have, which modules you have played and when, and your answers to the practice questions.
• Your final exam answers and result, with dates, and your certificate number.
• A record of each sign-in: the time, the internet address and the browser.
• If you bought a course: your purchase reference, the course, the amount, your billing country, and the name and e-mail address you gave the payment page. Sterling never sees your card number; payment is taken by Stripe on its own secure page.

Why we use it

• To give you your course, keep your place, and send you sign-in links and reminders.
• To run the final exam and issue your certificate.
• If your organisation enrolled you: to show your organisation your progress.
• If you bought a course: to take payment, send your receipt and invoice, and handle refunds, as part of our contract with you and our legal duty to keep tax records.
• To keep the service secure and prevent misuse.

Who sees what

• Your organisation's client administrators (the colleagues who manage Sterling Academy for it) see whether you have started and finished each course, whether you took the final exam and whether your certificate was issued, with the dates. They never see your answers or scores.
• The Sterling consultant who looks after your organisation's account can see the same progress record. Each time they open the named list, it is logged. If your organisation is served by a Sterling group company, such as Lakshy Management Consultant in India or Cyber Vantage 360 in the Philippines, that company's consultants may be the ones who see it.
• If you bought a course yourself, nobody at an organisation sees your record.
• Anyone with your certificate number can check on our public verification page that the certificate is genuine.

E-mails we send you

• Sign-in links and codes, and your welcome e-mail.
• If a course stays open, up to three reminders per course. If it is still open after three weeks, your organisation's client administrators are told how many learners are still open, and see the names on their own progress page.
• On longer courses, short messages about your own progress (after the first module, halfway, near the end, and if you pause). These come to you only and stop when you finish.
• Your certificate, when you pass.

We do not send you marketing about other courses unless you have agreed to receive it.

The final exam and your certificate

When you finish the modules, Sterling Academy passes your name, e-mail address, organisation (if any), course and completion date to Sterling's training system, which sends you the final exam and issues and e-mails your certificate.

Written answers in the final exam may be marked with the help of an artificial-intelligence service operated by Anthropic for Sterling. Those marks are used for reporting only; your certificate does not depend on them, and no decision about you is made by automated means alone.

Services that work for us

• Microsoft Azure: what it does: Hosts Sterling Academy and its records; where: United Arab Emirates
• Cloudflare: what it does: Delivers pages and video securely; where: Global network
• Postmark: what it does: Sends our e-mails (content kept up to 7 days); where: United States
• Stripe: what it does: Takes payment for courses you buy; where: Stripe's global network
• Sterling's training system: what it does: Final exam and certificates; where: Operated by Sterling on Microsoft Azure
• Anthropic: what it does: AI-assisted marking of written exam answers, for reporting only; where: United States

Where your details go to another country, we use the safeguards the law requires.

How long we keep it

• Enrolled by your organisation: for as long as your organisation instructs us; by default, 36 months after its account with Sterling closes. Your organisation can ask us to return or delete the records earlier.
• Bought a course yourself: for 36 months after your access ends, and purchase records for as long as tax law requires.
• Certificate register: certificate number, your name, the course and the date are kept for as long as the certificate may need to be verified.

Your rights

Depending on the law that applies to you, you can ask to see your details, correct them, have them deleted, limit or object to their use, or receive a copy to take elsewhere. You can also complain to your data protection regulator.

• Enrolled by your organisation: ask your client administrator first, because your organisation decides about your training record. You can also write to privacy@sterling-grc.com and we will pass your request to your organisation and help it answer.
• Bought a course yourself: write to privacy@sterling-grc.com.

We answer requests promptly and within the period the applicable law sets.

Changes to this notice

When we change this notice, the new version shows here with its date, and you see it on your next visit.

Enquiries through this website

If you send an enquiry through the form on this website, Sterling International Consulting keeps what you entered (your name, work e-mail address, company, country, the course you asked about, the number of learners and your message), the time it was sent, the page you came from on this website, and a one-way code derived from the internet address it came from (the address itself is not kept), under a reference number. It is sent to Sterling's sales team, who use it to reply to you and to prepare a proposal, and a confirmation is sent to the e-mail address you gave; it is used for nothing else and is not shared outside Sterling. The form is protected against automated misuse by Cloudflare Turnstile, which may set a cookie on that page alone. After 24 months from the day you sent it, your name, e-mail address, company and message are removed from the record by the platform; the reference, the dates, the country, the course and the number of learners remain. If you tick the box asking for occasional updates about new Sterling Academy courses, that choice and its time are recorded with your enquiry; nothing is sent from it until Sterling starts such updates, and you can unsubscribe at any time by writing to sales@sterling-grc.com. To ask about or withdraw an enquiry, write to sales@sterling-grc.com and quote the reference.

Purchases you start but do not complete

If you start a purchase and do not complete it, we may send you a few reminders about it; every reminder has an unsubscribe link, and you can also ask us not to send them when you enter your e-mail address.

When you buy a course

When you buy a course, we keep your name, e-mail address, the city and country of your billing address and any tax number you give, to manage your purchase and keep our records.