These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) govern the relationship between CS&AC and any person or entity (the “Customer”, “you”) who purchases, downloads, installs, or otherwise uses products or services supplied by CS&AC through any of the three websites listed above (together, the “Sites”).
For the purposes of these Terms:
- Products means any digital content, software tool, local utility, framework, guide, playbook, template, or AI-assisted resource offered for purchase through the Sites.
- Services means consulting engagements, advisory work, and any professional services offered through seconsulting.ch.
- Digital Content means written materials delivered as downloadable files (documents, guides, frameworks, playbooks, templates).
- Tools means software utilities that execute on the Customer’s own hardware and are delivered as installable packages.
- Order means a purchase initiated by the Customer through a Stripe-powered checkout or accepted by CS&AC in writing for consulting engagements.
- Agreement means these Terms together with any engagement letter, statement of work, or in-product documentation referenced herein.
These Terms take effect when the Customer completes an Order. For purchases made through the Sites, acceptance is captured electronically at checkout through a required checkbox mechanism displayed by the payment processor, by which the Customer affirms having read and agreed to these Terms before payment is authorised. The payment cannot be completed without that affirmation.
Browsing the Sites, reading these Terms, or creating an unsubmitted order does not, on its own, constitute acceptance. Acceptance occurs at the moment of payment confirmation.
The version of these Terms displayed to the Customer at the moment of checkout is the version that governs that specific Order, irrespective of any subsequent revisions. CS&AC preserves a record of the version accepted, the date and time of acceptance, and the associated Order identifier.
For consulting Services, acceptance occurs through signature of the engagement letter or statement of work, which incorporates these Terms by reference.
CS&AC offers three categories of deliverable, each governed by these Terms and any additional documentation specific to that category:
- Digital Content — written guidance, frameworks, playbooks, templates, checklists, methodologies, and AI prompt assets, delivered as downloadable files. The nature of Digital Content is further addressed in Section 10.
- Tools — software utilities delivered as local applications that execute on the Customer’s own hardware, operate offline by default, and store their data on the Customer’s device. The nature of Tools and the Customer’s responsibilities in respect of them are further addressed in Section 11.
- Consulting Services — tailored advisory, assessment, and implementation-support engagements delivered under a separate engagement letter or statement of work. Consulting Services are further addressed in Section 16.
The specific scope, inclusions, exclusions, and intended use of each individual Product are described on its corresponding Site page and, where applicable, within the Product itself.
All prices displayed on the Sites are quoted in United States Dollars (USD) and are inclusive of any taxes that may apply on the side of CS&AC. No additional taxes are added at checkout. CS&AC does not collect Value Added Tax (VAT) on Orders; CS&AC operates below the Swiss VAT registration threshold applicable to sole proprietorships and may update this position should that status change.
Any local, import, withholding, or other taxes or charges that may apply in the Customer’s own jurisdiction as a result of the Order are the sole responsibility of the Customer.
Payments are processed by Stripe Payments Europe Limited (“Stripe”). By completing an Order, the Customer authorises Stripe to charge the selected payment instrument for the full amount displayed at checkout. CS&AC does not receive, store, or process the Customer’s full payment credentials at any point.
An Order is accepted by CS&AC only when Stripe confirms successful authorisation and capture of the payment. Until such confirmation, no contract for the supply of the Product has been formed.
Upon confirmation of payment, Digital Content and Tools are delivered electronically to the email address supplied by the Customer at checkout. Delivery is effected by the generation of a time-limited, signed download link issued by CS&AC’s fulfilment system and transmitted via the Sites’ email delivery processor (see Section 15).
Unless otherwise stated on the Product page, the download link remains valid for seven (7) days from the moment of issuance. The Customer is responsible for downloading the Product before expiry of the link. CS&AC may, at its sole discretion and upon reasonable request, issue a replacement link if the original expired unused; CS&AC is under no obligation to do so.
If the email address supplied by the Customer is invalid, malformed, or results in a delivery failure, the Order remains valid; delivery will be considered effected when CS&AC dispatches the link from its fulfilment system, and the Customer is responsible for ensuring their email infrastructure accepts the message.
Subject to payment in full and continuing compliance with these Terms, CS&AC grants the Customer a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to use the Products as follows:
- For individual Customers — personal use by the individual who purchased the Product.
- For business Customers — internal use within the purchasing organisation, including implementation, adaptation, and training of the organisation’s own personnel.
The following uses are expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of CS&AC:
- Redistribution, public posting, or sharing of the Products or derivative works thereof, whether for consideration or free of charge.
- Resale, sublicensing, or inclusion of the Products in any offering made available to third parties.
- Creation of competitive, derivative, or substantially similar products intended for sale or distribution.
- Use of the Products, in whole or in part, as training data, reference corpora, or fine-tuning inputs for any machine learning or artificial intelligence system.
- Removal, obscuration, or alteration of any copyright notice, authorship attribution, or version identifier contained within the Products.
Reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of Tools is prohibited except to the narrow extent such activity is expressly permitted by applicable mandatory law (for example, to achieve interoperability as provided for under Article 21 of the Swiss Copyright Act).
Digital Content and Tools are delivered immediately upon confirmation of payment. By completing an Order for Digital Content or Tools, the Customer expressly requests immediate execution of the contract and, to the extent permitted by applicable law, expressly waives any statutory right of withdrawal or cancellation that might otherwise attach to distance sales of digital content.
Once the download link has been generated and dispatched, the Order is considered fulfilled and no refunds are issued, except where a refund is required by non-waivable provisions of Swiss consumer protection law.
Refund, cancellation, and termination arrangements for Consulting Services are governed by the applicable engagement letter or statement of work and are not covered by this Section.
The Products and Services are provided “as is” and “as available”. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, CS&AC disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including without limitation any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, quiet enjoyment, uninterrupted or error-free operation, accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any specific business, technical, or security objective.
No oral or written information, advice, or representation made by CS&AC, its personnel, or its representatives shall create any warranty not expressly granted in these Terms.
Sections 9, 10, and 11 expand on specific aspects of this disclaimer that apply to the nature of the Products in particular.
No cybersecurity product, framework, guide, playbook, consultation, tool, or AI-assisted resource — whether purchased from, authored by, recommended by, or otherwise associated with CS&AC — guarantees protection against unauthorised access, data breach, ransomware, malware, phishing, social engineering, supply-chain compromise, zero-day exploitation, insider threat, denial of service, business email compromise, or any other form of security incident, whether known, unknown, existing, or yet to emerge.
The threat landscape is dynamic, adversary capabilities evolve continuously, and security is the product of sustained operational discipline rather than the acquisition of any single artefact. Materials delivered reflect the state of practice as of the delivery date.
Implementation, operational maintenance, personnel training, access governance, patching discipline, incident response, and the ongoing adaptation of the Customer’s security posture remain the sole and exclusive responsibility of the Customer.
The Products offered by CS&AC are informational and educational materials. They consist of documented guidance, frameworks, playbooks, templates, checklists, methodologies, strategic plans, AI prompt assets, and — in the case of consulting — professional advisory services.
The Products are not:
- firewalls, intrusion-detection systems, endpoint protection, antivirus, SIEM platforms, or any other form of active or passive technical security control;
- managed security services, real-time monitoring, incident response, or security operations;
- insurance, indemnification, or financial protection against security incidents or their consequences.
By purchasing, the Customer confirms their understanding that:
- The Products represent information, knowledge, and methodology — not protective technology. The distinction is deliberate and material.
- Reading a guide does not, on its own, secure any system. Implementation, operation, maintenance, monitoring, and ongoing adaptation are the exclusive responsibility of the Customer.
- A playbook describing how to respond to a given class of incident does not prevent, interrupt, or mitigate such an incident. It documents what to do. The Customer must still have the technical controls, trained personnel, and operational discipline to apply it.
- A security framework is a set of recommendations based on current best practice. It does not constitute a warranty, guarantee, or assurance that following it will prevent any specific attack, breach, or loss.
- The threat landscape evolves continuously. Material reflects the state of practice as of the delivery date and is not updated automatically after purchase.
Customers who do not accept these principles — who expect that purchasing written guidance will, by itself, provide protection against criminal activity targeting their systems, data, or personnel — should not purchase the Products. CS&AC will not be held responsible for outcomes arising from misunderstanding of this distinction.
A subset of the Products consists of software tools and local utilities that the Customer installs and operates on their own hardware. This category includes — without limitation — password vaults, offline document editors, threat and travel advisory applications, news and intelligence aggregation applications, email-handling utilities, and other local software delivered by CS&AC from time to time. Such tools are designed to operate on the Customer’s device, store their data locally, and function without any ongoing connection to CS&AC’s infrastructure. By design, CS&AC has no visibility into, access to, or control over the Customer’s data, credentials, or configuration at any time.
The Customer is solely and exclusively responsible for:
- Understanding the intended function, scope, and operating requirements of each tool before use. Documentation, in-application warnings, release notes, and usage guidance are provided with each tool and must be read and followed.
- Correct installation and configuration on appropriate hardware and operating systems.
- The security, integrity, and availability of all data files created, stored, or managed by the tools — their backup, their physical protection, their recovery, and their confidentiality. Where a tool produces an encrypted data file (for example, but not limited to, a password-vault file), the Customer accepts that loss, corruption, or exposure of that file is a Customer risk.
- Secure selection and retention of any credentials, master passwords, passphrases, or encryption keys required by the tools. Where a tool is designed so that loss of such a credential results in permanent, unrecoverable loss of access to the associated data, the Customer accepts that result as a feature of the design, not a defect. CS&AC operates no recovery mechanism, backdoor, or administrative override for any such tool and is unable, by design, to assist in recovery under any circumstance.
- The physical and digital environment in which the tools operate — including the security of the host device, protection against malware, control of physical access, network exposure, and the broader cybersecurity posture of the environment.
- Judging the suitability of each tool for the Customer’s specific use case. The Customer is responsible for assessing, before purchase, whether a given tool meets the Customer’s requirements.
The tools are designed according to stated best practices as of their release date. They do not prevent, detect, or respond to compromise of the host device or of the broader environment in which they run. A password vault, by example, protects stored credentials at rest through encryption; it does not protect a device that has already been compromised. A local document editor processes documents locally; it does not defend the host system against malicious documents. An advisory or intelligence application delivers information; it does not act on that information on the Customer’s behalf, nor warrant any specific decision arising from it.
Customers who misconfigure the tools, ignore in-application warnings, fail to back up their data, lose their credentials, operate the tools on compromised hardware, make business decisions based on the tools’ output without appropriate independent judgement, or otherwise misuse the tools bear full responsibility for any resulting loss, damage, or consequence. CS&AC will not be held responsible for outcomes arising from such misuse, nor for criminal activity targeting the Customer’s environment, nor for any combination of the two.
To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and subject to the mandatory carve-out below, the total aggregate liability of CS&AC arising from, or in connection with, this Agreement or any Product or Service — whether the claim is brought in contract, tort (including negligence), statute, restitution, or on any other basis whatsoever — shall not exceed the amount actually paid by the Customer to CS&AC for the specific Product or Service giving rise to the claim.
For avoidance of doubt, this cap means: in the event of a successful claim, the maximum financial remedy available to the Customer is a refund of the purchase price of the specific Product or Service to which the claim relates. No further damages, compensation, or relief of any kind shall be recoverable from CS&AC.
CS&AC shall not, under any circumstances, be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including without limitation lost profits, lost revenue, lost data, lost business opportunity, loss of goodwill, loss of reputation, cost of procurement of substitute products or services, business interruption, or regulatory fines, irrespective of whether CS&AC was advised of the possibility of such damages and irrespective of whether such damages were foreseeable.
Mandatory carve-out. Nothing in this Section limits or excludes liability for willful misconduct (dol) or gross negligence (faute grave) to the extent such limitation or exclusion is prohibited by Article 100 of the Swiss Code of Obligations, nor any other liability which cannot be limited or excluded under mandatory applicable law.
All Products, Services deliverables, Sites content, and materials made available by CS&AC are the intellectual property of CS&AC and are protected by Swiss and international copyright, trademark, and other applicable intellectual property laws. All rights not expressly granted in these Terms are reserved.
Nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of any intellectual property to the Customer. The license granted under Section 6 is the exclusive permission granted by CS&AC in respect of the Products. No trademark license is granted or implied.
Feedback, suggestions, and improvement ideas voluntarily shared by the Customer with CS&AC may be used by CS&AC for any purpose, without obligation or compensation, unless expressly agreed otherwise in writing.
In using the Sites, the Products, and the Services, the Customer agrees to:
- Provide accurate, current, and complete information at the time of purchase, including a valid email address capable of receiving fulfilment communications.
- Not misrepresent their identity, affiliation, or intended use of the Products.
- Use the Products only for lawful purposes and in accordance with the license granted in Section 6.
- Not attempt to circumvent license restrictions, technical protection measures, or access controls.
- Not attempt to reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble Tools, except to the narrow extent permitted by mandatory applicable law.
- Read and follow in-application warnings, product documentation, and usage guidance associated with the Tools.
- Maintain the confidentiality and integrity of any credentials, download links, or data files that the Customer receives in connection with the Products.
Material breach of these obligations entitles CS&AC to suspend or terminate the license granted under Section 6 with immediate effect, without refund and without prejudice to any other remedy available at law.
CS&AC relies on a small number of clearly scoped third-party processors to deliver its Products and operate its business. These processors, their purpose, and their scope are disclosed in the Privacy Policy and include, at the date of these Terms:
- Stripe Payments Europe Limited — payment processing at checkout.
- Resend (Dublin, Ireland; EU region) — electronic delivery of purchase-flow emails (download links, receipts). Resend is not used for general customer enquiries or on-demand requests.
- Google Workspace — owner-managed mailbox for general enquiries, on-demand requests, and consulting correspondence.
- Cloudflare — website hosting, DNS, content delivery, and object storage for Product files.
Each processor operates under its own terms and privacy practices. CS&AC has selected processors offering contractually enforceable data protection standards aligned with Swiss and EU law and has executed data processing agreements with them where applicable. CS&AC is not liable for outages, errors, or independent acts of these processors beyond the contractual obligations owed by those processors to CS&AC.
Consulting Services offered through seconsulting.ch are tailored professional engagements and are governed primarily by a written engagement letter or statement of work executed between CS&AC and the Customer. The engagement letter shall specify the scope, deliverables, timeline, fees, payment schedule, confidentiality obligations, and any engagement-specific terms.
These Terms apply to every Consulting Services engagement as a baseline. In the event of a conflict between these Terms and an executed engagement letter, the engagement letter prevails for that specific engagement and that engagement only.
The liability limitation in Section 12 applies in full to Consulting Services, with the amount referenced in that Section being the fees actually paid by the Customer to CS&AC for the specific engagement giving rise to the claim.
Absent an executed engagement letter, CS&AC provides no Consulting Services; preliminary discussions, introductory calls, or exchanged correspondence do not constitute a binding engagement.
CS&AC may amend these Terms at any time. Amended Terms take effect upon publication on the seconsulting.ch Site and apply to Orders placed after the effective date of publication. Orders placed before that date remain governed by the version of the Terms accepted at the moment of those Orders, as preserved in CS&AC’s records.
Customers are encouraged to review these Terms periodically. Continued use of any Product in breach of a provision introduced in an amended version of the Terms does not automatically subject that prior Product to the amended version; the version originally accepted remains authoritative for the original Order.
Personal data provided by the Customer in connection with an Order or an interaction with CS&AC is handled in accordance with the Privacy Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference. By accepting these Terms, the Customer acknowledges having read and understood the Privacy Policy.
Cross-references: Section 15 of these Terms identifies the third-party processors relied upon. Section 4 of the Privacy Policy addresses the data collected in connection with purchases. Section 6 of the Privacy Policy addresses on-demand request handling.
CS&AC may suspend or terminate the license granted under Section 6 with immediate effect, without refund, in the event of material breach by the Customer of Sections 6 (License & Permitted Use), 14 (User Obligations), or any other material term of these Terms.
Upon termination: (i) the license is revoked; (ii) the Customer must cease all use of the Products and delete all copies in the Customer’s possession or control; (iii) no refund is payable; (iv) CS&AC’s remedies under Section 12 and at law remain available.
Sections 8 through 13 and 21 survive termination of this Agreement.
Neither party shall be liable for delay or failure in the performance of its obligations under this Agreement caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including without limitation natural disasters, acts of war, terrorism, civil unrest, government action, infrastructure outages, pandemic, third-party service provider failure, or large-scale cyber incidents not attributable to the affected party’s own negligence.
The affected party shall notify the other as soon as reasonably practicable and shall resume performance as soon as the force majeure event abates.
These Terms, the Agreement, and any non-contractual obligation arising from or in connection with them, are governed exclusively by the substantive law of Switzerland, with the express exclusion of conflict-of-laws rules and of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).
Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or in connection with these Terms, the Agreement, or any Product or Service — including disputes concerning their existence, validity, interpretation, performance, breach, or termination — shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts of the Canton of Bern, Switzerland.
Where the Customer qualifies as a consumer under applicable mandatory law, any non-waivable protection afforded to that Customer by the law of their habitual residence applies in addition to, and not in derogation of, the above.
If any provision of these Terms is held by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, unenforceable, or contrary to applicable mandatory law, that provision shall be modified to the minimum extent necessary to render it valid and enforceable while preserving as closely as possible the original intent of the parties. The invalidity or unenforceability of a single provision shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining provisions, which shall remain in full force and effect.
These Terms are initially published in English. CS&AC intends to publish official translations of these Terms into German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Polish in the period following initial publication, for the convenience of Customers in those linguistic markets.
Until any such translation is formally designated by CS&AC as an authoritative version, the English text of these Terms prevails in all respects. Upon formal publication of an official translation, that translation becomes authoritative for Customers who accepted these Terms in that language; in the event of ambiguity or conflict between language versions, the language version accepted by the Customer at checkout, as preserved in CS&AC’s records, shall prevail.
Bielstrasse 15
3294 Büren an der Aare
Switzerland
This Terms of Service document is published by CS&AC on seconsulting.ch and applies to all three websites operated by CS&AC: seconsulting.ch, lisalab.net, and elisalab.net. References on those other Sites direct to this authoritative version.