Privacy and Cookie Notice

For California Consumers, please view Hitachi Hitachi Energy's Privacy Notice & Policy as required under the California Consumer Privacy Act.

1. Introduction

This Digital Channels Privacy and Cookie Notice ("Notice") applies to the Hitachi Energy Group of companies, which means Hitachi Energy Ltd, Switzerland its subsidiaries. The Hitachi Energy company that is communicating with you or to which you are providing goods or services (referred to as "Hitachi Energy" or "we"), is responsible for the processing of your personal data and other information related to you (such as cookies) and controls how it is used, in accordance with this Notice.

At Hitachi Energy, respecting your data protection rights is a top priority. This Notice explains how we use personal data and other information about you, how we process such data, and what rights you have regarding your personal data.

2. Who is responsible for the processing of your personal data?

Hitachi Energy Ltd and its subsidiary companies are responsible for your personal data. For applicable privacy and data protection laws, the primary controller of your data is the Hitachi Energy subsidiary company, which is communicating with you. Other subsidiary companies of Hitachi Energy may also receive and process your personal data, either in the capacity of controller or processor and this Notice applies equally to them.

3. The types of information we collect and use?

We collect and use personal data that concerns you in connection with use of our digital channels.We may collect the following categories of personal data and other information related to you (such as cookies):

• Identification data and business contact information, you share with us such as first name, last name, job/position/title, business email address, business address, telephone number, mobile telephone number, telefax number, private telephone number, gender, date of birth, login credentials.
• Additional information you provide to us in the course of your use of the platform, register for an account and providing the service requested such as interests in Hitachi Energy products, subscription preferences, personal preferences, profile information (cv), posts on digital channels, comments, opinions, images and videos, credit card and other payment information.
• Electronic identification data and information collected by the communications systems, IT applications and website browser such as information technology usage (system access, IT and internet usage), device identifier (mobile device ID, IP address, browser type, browser settings, time and URL accessed, cookies), registration and login credentials, login data and log files, analytics ID, searches, website registration and sound recordings (e.g. voice mail/phone recordings, Skype recordings).

In case you would like to be provided with information about a specific personal data processing activity, you can request that by submitting a request at www.hitachiabb-powergrids.com/privacy.

4. Why we use your personal data?

We may use your personal data and other information as described above for the following purposes:

• to understand your interests and preferences in relation to the Hitachi Energy digital channels;
• to register an account, grant you access to and authenticate you on Hitachi Energy's digital channels;
• to subscribe and in the course of the subscription to follow comments, posts, articles, authors, news and updates about Hitachi Energy products and services;
• in the course of creation of and publishing media and press releases, to create brochures, news, media assets (such as images, videos), newsletters etc.;
• in order to create articles that will be published on Hitachi Energy's internal and external digital channels;
• to provide you the possibility to create your profile on Hitachi Energy digital channels for example to create posts, make comments, follow posts and discussions and sign-up for newsletters etc.;
• to allow you making posts, comments, upload content, participate quizzes and publishing opinions on Hitachi Energy digital channels;
• in the course of sharing job adds on Hitachi Energy's digital channels;
• to provide customer support and process, evaluate and respond to requests and inquiries;
• to collect your image and your personal data in the course of an event to show impressions of an event; and
• to create lists of contact persons for specific topics.

We only collect the personal data from you that we need for the above purposes. For statistical purposes, improvement of our services and testing of our IT systems we use as much as reasonably possible anonymized data. This means that these data can no longer (in)directly identify you or single you out as an individual.

We offer certain digital channels where you can post information on the site which will then be available to other visitors of the site. Examples are discussion forums and comments on blogs. When you post, basic information identifying you as the poster will be made available to other visitors together with your posted information. This information includes your name or alias, and where relevant, may include other information such as your country or the name of the company or organization you work for. You have control over this data in your user profile and can control what will be shown in your posts.

We may also display statistical, reputational and other similar information related to your user account. Examples are the number of forum posts you have posted or a rating showing how useful other visitors have rated your posts. For details, please see the help pages for each service.

5. What happens if you do not provide us with the information we had asked you for or if you ask us to stop processing your information

Where it concerns processing operations related to Hitachi Energy digital channels (as described above), Hitachi Energy will not be able to adequately establish, conduct or terminate a business relationship with you or your company and generally perform the purposes described above without certain personal data. Although we cannot obligate you to share your personal data with us, please note that this then may have consequences which could affect the use of the platform in a negative manner, such as not being able to provide the requested service, take requested pre-contractual measures to enter into a contract with you or to establish and continue the business.

6. The legal basis we rely on

We use your personal data and other information related to you for the purposes described in this notice based on one of the following legal bases, as applicable:

• We may process your personal data for the fulfilment of contractual obligations resulting from contracts with you or your company, or as part of pre-contractual measures we take; 
• We will ask your consent for the activities described in this privacy notice when required by applicable law, for example when we process your data for carrying out analytics by the use of first and third party cookies; or
• In some cases, we rely on our legitimate interests to process your personal data insofar as this is not overridden by your own privacy interests. Such interests may include:
  • Better understand users’ behavior to further improve our offerings
  • Purposes of ensuring network and information security (for example to prevent malicious use such as hacking and denial of service attacks)
  • Offering a personalized service and communications
  • Analytics and profiling for business intelligence
  • Allowing interaction on products and services offered by Hitachi Energy

You may obtain a copy of our assessment of why we may process your personal data for these interests by submitting a request at www.hitachiabb-powergrids.com/privacy.

7. Parties we share your personal data with (in and outside the EU and EEA or outside the country where the Hitachi Energy company that controls your data is located)

We only share your personal data with other Hitachi Energy affiliates or third parties as necessary for the purposes described in the table below. In certain services we offer, your group membership and user profile may be visible to other users in the same group and such user data is also visible to you. Where we share your personal data with an affiliate or third party so that it is transferred to or becomes accessible from outside the European Union (“EU”) and the European Economic Area ("EEA") or outside the country where the Hitachi Energy company that controls your data is located, we always put adequate safeguards in place to protect your personal data. Examples of these safeguards are an adequacy decision of the European Commission (read more here), Standard Contractual Clauses (read more here), Privacy Shield certification (read more here), and the Binding Corporate Rules (read more here). We have taken additional measures for the transfer of data from within to outside the EU, EEA and outside the country where the Hitachi Energy company that controls your data is located to protect your personal data. If you would like an overview of the safeguards, which are in place, please submit a request at www.hitachiabb-powergrids.com/privacy.

8. How long we keep your personal data

Based on mandatory legislation, Hitachi Energy must keep certain personal data for a minimum period of time. We only keep your personal data for as long as necessary for the purposes described in this privacy notice. After this time, we will securely delete your personal data, unless we are required to keep it in order to meet legal or regulatory obligations, or to resolve potential disputes. Note, Hitachi Energy will to the extent necessary delete posts, articles, press releases or destroy brochures, where your image was used; and will remove it from all databases to avoid further usage.

At the same time, applicable data protection laws require that we do not keep personal data in an identifiable form for any longer than is necessary for the purpose for which the personal data is being processed. Through the setting of IT applications and policies we ensure that our keeping of your personal data is deleted when we no longer need it.

For more information regarding specific retention periods that apply to your personal data, please submit a request at www.hitachiabb-powergrids.com/privacy.

9. Your data privacy rights

Depending on the jurisdiction in which you are located and in which your personal data is processed, you may have the following rights:

Please note that the rights described above are not absolute, and that your request cannot always be met entirely. For example, sometimes we cannot delete or restrict the processing of your personal data as we may have legal obligations or contractual obligations to keep certain such personal data.

You may request to enforce your data privacy rights at www.hitachiabb-powergrids.com/privacy.

10. Contact and further information

If you want to access your personal data, make use of any of your other rights mentioned above or if you have any questions or concerns about how Hitachi Energy processes your personal data, please contact our Group Data Protection Officer at [email protected], or submit your complaint at www.hitachiabb-powergrids.com/privacy

Should you not be satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data against the law, you may also have the right to file a complaint with the Data Privacy Authority in your country of residence or work, or seek a remedy through the courts where you believe an infringement of data privacy laws may have taken place.

11. Links

The external sites linked to from the Hitachi Energy web sites are developed by people over whom Hitachi Energy exercises no control. These other sites may place their own cookies on your computer, collect data or solicit personal information. Please refer to the privacy notice on each site for more information.

Date of publication: July 1, 2020