V.3, Status 09.12.2021

1.1 These General Terms and Conditions (GTC) apply to all services provided by Increase Your Skills GmbH. The services of Increase Your Skills GmbH shown on the website include: training via an e-learning platform, awareness courses, LMS platform licences and phishing attack simulator.

1.2 Our offers are exclusively directed to entrepreneurs according to § 14 BGB, legal entities under public law or special funds under public law and not to consumers according to § 13 BGB.

1.3 These General Terms and Conditions (GTC) are an integral part of the contract between Increase Your Skills GmbH and the Client. Conflicting or deviating terms and conditions of the Client or third parties shall not become part of the contract, even if Increase Your Skills GmbH does not separately object to their applicability in individual cases. Individual agreements made in writing shall remain unaffected.

2.1 The contractual subject matter is the agreed services provided by Increase Your Skills GmbH. The exact details and particulars regarding the content, scope and performance of the services offered can be found in the respective descriptions and information from the offers and, if applicable, contract offers. Subsidiary agreements and any other contractual modifications of the GTC must be made in writing at the very least.

2.2 The Client will be permitted to use the respective current software version for the agreed number of authorised users and may do so via an internet browser. The range of functions and the availability of the software as well as the conditions of use during the term of the contractual relationship are determined by the specific contractual agreements.

2.3 Increase Your Skills GmbH may update and further develop its software at any time and adapt it in particular due to a changed legal situation, technical developments or to improve IT security. For this purpose, the Client will be informed about necessary updates in a timely manner, namely three days before the update.

2.4 Increase Your Skills GmbH is not obliged to adapt the software to the Client's individual needs or IT environment unless the parties have agreed otherwise in writing.

2.5 The software used by Increase Your Skills GmbH does not endanger the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of the ITC infrastructure at any time during the duration of the training, nor does it jeopardise the confidentiality or security interests of the Client.

2.6 Our services can be booked in each case via our booking portal if posted there or via direct contact with our sales team or sales partner. The booking in the online booking portal is made by selecting the relevant service (e.g. a training course) and a number of users as well as by entering the required information (including company and payment details) as shown in the input fields and confirming it at the end of the booking process. After the booking, booking confirmation is sent with the details of the booking and the access or retrieval data for the contractual service, through which a contract is concluded. Bookings made via direct contact are concluded by means of an offer confirmation.

2.7 Increase Your Skills GmbH reserves the right to not accept or only partially accept a booking without specifying reasons. There is no right to a specific booking of a service unless it is explicitly stated otherwise. Furthermore, Increase Your Skills GmbH reserves the right to refuse to provide certain services temporarily or permanently. There is no right to a specific availability of a service unless expressly agreed otherwise.

2.8 Increase Your Skills GmbH offers the participants an analysis, assessment, and joint evaluation of their resistance to phishing attacks by means of the Phishing Attack Simulator (hereafter referred to as PAS), with regard to phishing, spear phishing, smishing and vishing attacks, for example. It assists the Client with the preparation and setup of the whitelisting. Instructions are provided for the most common systems. During the training, the Client is responsible for ensuring that no internal security mechanisms (e.g., proxy servers) are blocking the delivery of emails. The evaluation of the results of the PAS is not personalised.

2.9 Increase Your Skills GmbH offers the Client training sessions on the topics of data protection and information security with its e-learning programs. After successful completion of an eLearning course, the Client (or users) receives a verified certificate for download. In this context, verified means that each certificate is assigned a unique ID, which can be validated on the server of Increase Your Skills GmbH.

3.1 The prices stated in the description of the services in the booking portal or in the offers shall apply. Payment may be made using the payment methods offered in each case. We reserve the right to exclude certain payment methods in individual cases. Insofar as payment against invoicing is offered, we reserve the right to carry out a credit check in individual cases.

3.2 Claims will be due on receipt of the invoice and are payable in full within 14 days unless they are collected directly. Payment is considered to have been made as soon as the payment amount can be accessed. If a payment is refused and the Client is responsible for it, Increase Your Skills GmbH is entitled to invoice the resulting additional costs, expenses or other claims due to delayed payment.

3.3 In the event of non-payment within a reasonable grace period, the statutory provisions shall apply.

3.4 Mutual offsets are excluded unless the counterclaim is undisputed or has been legally established.

3.5  If the average gross monthly salary for full-time employees in Germany’s IT industry, as officially determined by the Federal Statistical Office index, has increased or decreased by more than 5% since concluding the contract or the date of the last amendment, Increase Your Skills GmbH may issue a written statement requesting a correspondingly appropriate adjustment of the payment owed.

3.5.1 An increase in payment may be requested no earlier than 12 months after the start of the contract, and subsequent increases no earlier than 12 months after the previous increase takes effect.

3.5.2 Increase Your Skills GmbH will notify its Clients of any planned price increase by email at least eight weeks before it takes effect. In its communication, Increase Your Skills GmbH will point out the following to its Clients:

• The intended price increase.
• The reason for the price increase.
• The extent of the price increase.The Clients may object to the intended price increase within two weeks after receipt of the notification of the same to Increase Your Skills GmbH; the objection is to be made in writing at the very least, e.g. by email.
• If the clients do not object or do not object in due time, the contract will continue under the terms of the new prices. If no objection is received, the increase will take effect two months after the announcement.
• If the Client objects in due time, the contract will continue under the old prices.

3.5.3 Increase Your Skills GmbH will reduce the prices for its services insofar as the relevant costs for the provision of the services are reduced after the conclusion of the contract.

4.1 Parts of our services (in particular training content) are subject to industrial property rights and are, among other things, protected by copyright. Increase Your Skills GmbH is exclusively entitled to the rights of use and exploitation thereof, and we reserve all rights thereto which are not expressly granted to the clients.

4.2 In order for Clients (or the users) to participate in our training courses or to integrate or distribute them depending on the individual booking, we grant you a simple right to the training courses that are the subject of the contract, which is transferable exclusively to the respective booking, and they're limited to the users specifically booked or released for distribution, to use them exclusively within the framework of our GTC. In particular, you are not entitled to make the training courses or parts thereof available to unauthorised third parties, to make them publicly accessible, to edit them (in particular not to remove, make unrecognisable or suppress trademarks of us or our partners), or to use or exploit them in any other way than agreed. The right of use shall expire in each case upon expiry of the training courses covered by the contract or upon expiry of the agreed term of the contract.

4.3 If Increase Your Skills GmbH integrates its Clients' pre-existing courses into its platform, such as in the case of individual bookings, the Clients grant Increase Your Skills GmbH a non-exclusive, transferable, free-of-charge right to (a) publish, host, store, reproduce, distribute, and make publicly available such content, as well as (b) edit or (c) sub-license such content to third parties, to the extent that this is necessary for the integration. In all other respects, the Client retains all rights to the content, for which the Client is solely responsible. Increase Your Skills GmbH does not adopt them as its own, nor is it obliged to review them in any manner.

5.1 Unless otherwise agreed in individual contracts, Increase Your Skills GmbH makes no assurances or guarantees that the results intended by the Client will be achieved through the use of its services. In particular, it does not owe any specific successes, results or other outcomes intended by the Client.

5.2 Increase Your Skills GmbH will do its utmost to provide its online offers as permanently as possible without disruptions. However, technically this is not 100% possible. Therefore, Increase Your Skills GmbH does not guarantee uninterrupted provision or specific availability of services. In particular, it is possible that access to said services or to certain functions are not available or may be restricted in whole or in part, temporarily or permanently. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that specific functions will be permanently maintained. The Increase Your Skills GmbH may adapt, change, or discontinue these at any time.

6.1 The respective offer shall be prepared and carried out according to the knowledge currently available. Increase Your Skills GmbH assumes no liability for advice given or the utilisation of the knowledge acquired. The designated services also do not represent individual legal advice or legal structure. Increase Your Skills GmbH therefore expressly states that Clients themselves are responsible for implementing any content they may have learned and, where appropriate, should also subject it to their own legal evaluation. Increase Your Skills GmbH is furthermore not liable for any successful cyberattack on the client's IT system after a training course.

6.2 Increase Your Skills GmbH is not liable for the personalised evaluation of the PAS results if the Client has transmitted falsified employee email addresses. The Client must ensure that the employees are properly informed. In particular, the Client must ensure that all participants have given their consent to the implementation of the simulation. Increase Your Skills GmbH is not liable for any missing consent of the employees.

6.3 In the event of incorrect data transmission on the part of the Client (in particular sending personal data in unencrypted emails), Increase Your Skills GmbH assumes no liability for any possible third-party data protection violations.

6.4 The Client ensures that the integrated content and data do not violate applicable law, official orders, third-party rights, or agreements with third parties. The Client agrees to release Increase Your Skills GmbH from any claims made by third parties based on a violation of this clause as of the first request. Increase Your Skills GmbH reserves the right to take appropriate measures in order to defend itself against third party claims, as well as the right to claim damages, including any reasonable costs resulting from said actions, and any other justified claims of its own against the Client.

6.5 Increase Your Skills GmbH is entitled to, at any time, delete or remove, temporarily or permanently, any content that is unlawful that could jeopardise or impair the functioning of its platforms, or that violates these GTC, without prior notice and providing reasons.

6.6 The Parties will not be liable for any damage that lies outside their scope of responsibility. Irrespective of the legal grounds, the parties will only be liable for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence or if culpably caused by injury to life, limb or health; or in the event of culpable breach of a significant contractual or cardinal obligation, the fulfilment of which makes the proper fulfilment of the contract possible in the first place, the breach of which jeopardises the achievement of the contractual purpose or compliance which may be regularly relied on. In this case, liability is limited to the foreseeable damage typical for the contract. Any further liability is excluded. Liability under the German Product Liability Act remains unaffected by these GTC.

7.1 The parties agree to comply with the appropriate data protection regulations applicable to them. Data shall be encrypted and transmitted via the designated, secure network infrastructure. The Client agrees to protect and store any login data received against third-party access in a manner corresponding with the state-of-the-art technology.

7.2 In the course of the performance of the contract by Increase Your Skills GmbH, personal data (e.g. names of course participants) are processed. For this purpose, an order processing agreement is concluded between Increase Your Skills GmbH and the Client upon conclusion of the contract. The Customer reserves the right to submit, prior to the conclusion of the contract, a different order processing agreement, which will then constitute the data protection basis of the personal data processing, provided that it meets the requirements of Art. 28 GDPR and is accepted by Increase Your Skills GmbH.

7.3 Increase Your Skills GmbH is entitled to use the name and logo of the Client for reference purposes, for example, on its own website or in client presentations. This may be revoked by the client at any time unless otherwise agreed.

7.4 The parties undertake to maintain confidentiality with regard to all trade and business secrets of which they become aware in the course of the performance of the contract and not to make them accessible to third parties. Excluded from this is information that is intended for publication or the disclosure of which the respective other party has agreed to. The obligation to maintain secrecy shall also apply beyond the duration of the cooperation.

7.5 The Client is independently obliged to fulfil the (stated) minimum technical requirements (e.g. installed programme for calling up the common video players, broadband stable Internet connection) for participation in our services.

7.6 Our GTC shall be governed exclusively by German law, excluding the conflict of laws and the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The exclusive place of jurisdiction for disputes arising from these GTC is Leipzig.

8.1 Contractual agreements that cover a certain term (usually one year) are valid for the agreed term and are automatically extended for the duration of the given term if they are not terminated in written form (including email) at least four weeks prior to the expiration of the given term. This may deviate in individual contracts. All statutory provisions regarding termination are applicable.

8.2 In addition, the contract may be cancelled in whole or in part by either party if there is good cause - without observing a notice period - within a reasonable period of time after knowledge of the reason for cancellation. (See also 3. 3)

Good cause includes, in particular, a serious breach of the contractual provisions, a criminal act or an attempt to commit one, and the bankruptcy of the contractual partner or of Increase Your Skills GmbH. If the good cause consists of the breach of a contractual obligation, the cancellation is only permissible after the unsuccessful lapse of a deadline set for remedial action or after an unsuccessful warning, unless a deadline is waived in accordance with Section 314 in conjunction with Section 323 (2) of the German Civil Code (BGB). In the event of cancellation for good cause, Increase Your Skills GmbH will be entitled to remuneration for the services rendered under the contract up to the effective date of the cancellation.

Unless otherwise stipulated, contractual notifications and declarations must at least be made in text form, §126 (b) BGB.

Increase Your Skills GmbH reserves the right to amend these General Terms and Conditions if this is necessary for valid reasons. Good reasons are in particular:

• Change in the legal situation.
• Changes in the jurisdiction of the highest courts.
• Changes in market conditions.
• Technical changes or further developments.
• Loopholes in the GTC.
• Other equivalent reasons.

Increase Your Skills GmbH will inform clients of any intended change to the GTC by email at least eight weeks before the change comes into force. In its notification, Increase Your Skills GmbH shall draw the attention of the Clients to the following:

• The intended amendment, highlighting it.
• The clients may object to the intended amendment to the GTC within two weeks of receipt of the notification of the same to Increase Your Skills GmbH; the objection shall be made at least in electronic form, e.g. by email.
• If the clients do not object or do not object in due time, the amendment shall become effective.
• If the customers object in due time, the old GTC shall continue to apply.

Should any of the above provisions be void or unenforceable, this will not affect the validity of the remaining provisions. The parties agree to replace such provisions with valid and enforceable provisions which correspond as closely as possible to the meaning and economic purpose as well as the intention of the parties at the time of conclusion of the contract.  The same shall apply in the event of a loophole in the contract.