Security

Your society's data, looked after properly

Members' details, audience lists and money all pass through TheatreHQ. Here's how we keep them safe, in plain English, and what you can do to help.

How we protect it

Built in, not bolted on.

Hosted in the UK

Your society's website and all of its data are hosted in the UK.

Card details never touch us

When someone pays by card, they type their details into Stripe's own secure payment form. PayPal and GoCardless work the same way. Card and bank details go straight to them and never reach TheatreHQ.

Encrypted nightly backups

Every site is backed up every night: the full database and everything you've uploaded. Each backup is encrypted on your site before it leaves, and we keep 14 daily, 8 weekly and 12 monthly copies.

Backups that are tested

A backup nobody has restored hasn't been proven. Once a week, each site's latest backup is restored into a test database and checked, table by table, against the original.

Strong sign-in

Passwords are stored scrambled, never in a form anyone can read. Two-factor sign-in works with any authenticator app and comes with recovery codes, and you can require it for every administrator, editor or approver.

Locked against guessing

After repeated failed sign-in attempts, the address they're coming from is locked out for a while, which stops anyone working through passwords. You can see locked addresses and failed attempts in your settings.

Only the access people need

Give each committee member their own login with the right role, and switch off the modules they don't use. The audit log records who changed what and when.

Secrets kept secret

The keys for your payment providers and the password for your email account are encrypted before they're stored, with AES-256, the same standard banks use.

Protected pages

Your site is served over a secure connection, forms are protected against being submitted from other sites, and pages carry modern browser security settings that make common attacks much harder.

GDPR

Tools to do the right thing.

Data protection law applies to every society, however small. TheatreHQ gives you the tools to meet it without a spreadsheet of who agreed to what.

Consent records. Who has agreed to marketing emails, photos or emergency treatment, and when, with a full history.
Cookie consent on your website, with a record of each choice.
Right to be forgotten. Remove a person's details and keep your sales and attendance figures intact.
Data retention rules that flag old records for review, so you don't keep data longer than you need.
A breach register for recording incidents, with the 72-hour reporting deadline shown.
Unsubscribe links on every marketing email, honoured straight away.

See Looking after personal data and Consent forms and membership compliance reports for how to use them.

Your part

Five habits that make the biggest difference.

One login per person. Shared logins make it impossible to tell who did what, and hard to remove someone who leaves.
Turn on two-factor sign-in, at least for administrators. Here's how.
Remove leavers the same week they step down from the committee. Managing committee members.
Give people only what they need. The box office team doesn't need the membership records.
Keep the society's accounts in the society's name: your domain, your Stripe account and your email, not one member's personal ones.

Got a question about
your data?

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