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Privacy Policy

Last Updated: October 2026

At Aura CMS (auracms.com.au), owned and operated in Sydney, Australia, we are dedicated to protecting the privacy, confidentiality, and spiritual integrity of faith communities and their congregations. We recognise that church data—spanning member identities, family lineages, pastoral care notes, and financial tithes—demands the highest standards of discretion and security.

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This Privacy Policy explains how Aura CMS collects, uses, protects, and discloses personal information in strict accordance with the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), and global compliance standards including GDPR and SOC 2 Type II.

1. The Information We Collect

We collect information through two primary capacities:

  • Account & Administrative Information (Directly from Churches): Contact details (name, email, phone number, billing address) and login credentials for church leaders, administrators, and authorized staff managing their Aura CMS instance.

  • Congregational & Pastoral Data (Processed on Behalf of Churches): Information stored by the church within Aura CMS, which may include member names, family demographics, pastoral attendance records, small group memberships, newcomer follow-ups, and donation/giving transactions.

Note: In relation to congregational data, the subscribing church acts as the Data Controller, and Aura CMS acts as the Data Processor.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use personal information strictly for legitimate pastoral and administrative operations:

  • Providing, operating, and customizing the Aura CMS platform to fit your ministry’s workflow.

  • Powering the AI Pastoral Assistant to execute authorized internal queries (e.g., retrieving attendance rosters, identifying newcomer follow-ups, and compiling group lists).

  • Processing subscription billing and issuing invoices.

  • Delivering direct local technical support and troubleshooting from our Sydney-based team.

  • Ensuring system integrity, audit logging, and platform security.

3. AI Pastoral Assistant & Privacy Safeguards

Our conversational AI pastoral assistant operates under strict enterprise privacy safeguards:

  • Zero Model Training on Church Data: Your church’s private data, congregant records, and pastoral notes are never used to train public LLMs or third-party AI models.

  • Strict Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): The AI assistant answers queries strictly according to the permissions of the logged-in user. An unauthorized volunteer cannot retrieve confidential tithe records or restricted pastoral care notes via the AI.

  • Tenant Isolation: Your data is logically segregated; AI queries from one church cannot access or leak information into another church’s instance.

4. Enterprise Security Standards & Data Protection

We believe that protecting God’s people includes protecting their personal data. Aura CMS is engineered with bank-grade defense:

  • Audited Compliance: Our infrastructure and operational processes undergo rigorous SOC 2 Type II audits and align with ISO 27001 and GDPR mandates.

  • End-to-End Encryption: All data is encrypted in transit using modern TLS (Transport Layer Security) and encrypted at rest utilizing AES-256 standards.

  • Localised Hosting: Church databases are hosted within secure Australian cloud infrastructure, ensuring low latency and domestic sovereignty over your records.

5. Third-Party Sharing & Disclosure

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal information to advertisers, marketers, or data brokers. We only disclose information when strictly necessary:

  • To certified sub-processors required to deliver the service (e.g., PCI-compliant payment gateways for tithes, verified SMS/email relay providers).

  • When required by Australian law, court subpoena, or regulatory enforcement bodies.

6. Data Retention, Portability & Deletion

  • Data Ownership: You retain 100% ownership of your ministry and congregational data.

  • Portability: Administrators can export church rosters and records at any time in industry-standard formats (CSV, Excel).

  • Right to be Forgotten & Deletion: Upon subscription cancellation or upon formal request, your data will be permanently wiped from our active servers and subsequent backup cycles following a 30-day grace transition period.

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