General Terms and Conditions

Preamble

SIWECOS is a project of CMS Garden. SIWECOS stands for “Secure Websites and Content Management Systems”. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy and its goal is to improve website security for small and medium-sized enterprises in the long-term.

With the customer’s acceptance of these general terms and conditions, a contract concerning the use of the SIWECOS website scanning service is concluded between the CMS Garden e.V. (hereinafter called “CMS Garden”) and the customer.

II. SIWECOS’ Services

SIWECOS enables website owners to have their websites checked for security vulnerabilities by CMS Garden at no charge. CMS Garden has access to various scanners, which CMS Garden uses to scan a customer’s specified websites at regular intervals. Should any vulnerability be detected, CMS Garden will inform the customer about this promptly by email. This email contains a report, which is also made available to the customer on their SIWECOS profile page.

III. Registering with SIWECOS

In order to use the SIWECOS service, customers must register on the SIWECOS website. Alternatively, customers can register for the service via the plugins for the various content management systems involved provided by CMS-Garden. In addition, verification of the website owner is necessary in order to prevent the scanning of websites by third parties. It is possible to register 10 domains per customer, which are regularly checked by CMS Garden for vulnerabilities. Please follow the instructions on the website www.siwecos.de if you wish to register.

IV. Registering via CMS Garden PlugIns

The CMS plugins provided on the website are open source components. Thus the use of the plugins is regulated solely by the license terms of the manufacturer, which are to be confirmed separately when downloading the plugins.

V. V. Liability

(1) Due to continuous technical development as well as the continuous introduction of new malware, SIWECOS can only contribute to the improvement of website security for SIWECOS customers. If an error report is not sent, however, this does not mean that the customer’s scanned website is free from security vulnerabilities, but merely that the scanners implemented by CMS Garden have not detected any security vulnerabilities known to them. For this reason, CMS Garden will under no circumstances guarantee a customer’s website is or customer’s websites are void of security vulnerabilities or that those websites shall not fall victim to cyber attacks.

(2) Furthermore, CMS Garden assumes unlimited liability only for damage caused by willful intent or gross negligence. This also applies to indirect damage.

(3) CMS Garden is liable for slight negligence only insofar as an obligation is violated which is of particular importance for fulfilling the contract (cardinal obligation). In such cases, liability is limited to typical and foreseeable damage. In the case of slight negligence, liability beyond this limitation is excluded.

(4) This limitation of liability does not apply in the event of harm to life, body or health.

VI. Contract Term / Termination

The contract is concluded for an indefinite period of time, and can be terminated with immediate effect both by CMS Garden or by the customer at any time, without indication of a reason.

VII. Final Provisions

(1) Collateral agreements, amendments, or supplements to this contract require written form to become legally effective. This also applies to this written form requirement itself.

(2) Should individual provisions of this contract be or become invalid, either completely or partially, the validity of the remaining provisions shall not be affected. CMS Garden and the customer are obligated in such a case to replace the invalid provision with a valid provision that corresponds as closely as possible to the economically intended purpose. The same applies to any possible loopholes.

(3) German law applies to the exclusion of UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. The place of jurisdiction is Cologne, unless this is in opposition with an exclusive court of jurisdiction.

Köln, September 2017