1. Application and Scope

1.1 Application

These terms apply to services provided by Helios Information Security Pty Ltd ACN 655 748 593 (Helios), a related body corporate of HPX Group Pty Ltd ACN 621 014 515 (HPX Group). In these terms, Group means HPX Group and its related bodies corporate.

These Terms of Engagement are to be read in conjunction with your Engagement Scope, and together with these Terms of Engagement, are the Engagement Agreement. If there is any inconsistency between the Engagement Scope and these Terms of Engagement these Terms of Engagement prevail.
We may update these Terms of Engagement from time to time. Please refer to this page for our current Terms of Engagement.
Capitalised terms have the meaning given in the Engagement Scope.

1.2 Scope of the Services

We will provide the Services in an honest, ethical, professional and timely manner.

In providing the Services we are not responsible for, or required to:
• advise on the commercial viability or commercial soundness of transactions or other business decisions;
• investigate the bona fides of other parties to a transaction; or
• do anything which we reasonably believe is unethical, or a breach any legal or regulatory law or requirement.

You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the details and information you provide to us. You must disclose all material, or relevant information (including any changes), in a timely manner, to enable us to provide the Services.

When you instruct us, we will exercise reasonable care to comply with your instructions, provided they are clear, adequate and reasonable. We may refuse to comply with them if they are unlawful, unethical, unreasonable or could result in reputational damage for us.

If you purchase or obtain any Helios products, including Manuals, Guides and Template Documents, or a licence to access online Training Modules, such products will be governed by separate terms and conditions. You will be responsible for reviewing and accepting such terms and conditions before purchasing or obtaining those products

2. Fees and invoicing

2.1 Fees

Unless otherwise agreed, our fees are determined by an hourly charge rate or on a fixed fee basis.

We may incur expenses to third parties on your behalf, like filing fees, postal or courier services, travel costs. We will let you know in advance if travel and accommodation costs or other substantial professional charges of more than $500 will be incurred.

If we engage the services of third parties and external specialists on your behalf, to provide specialist advice or services, including advocacy, or to act as our agent, we will inform you of the associated costs before they are incurred. You will be responsible for payment of all fees and expenses of any third parties we engage on your behalf.

Unless otherwise stated, all rates, charges and disbursements in the Engagement Scope are GST exclusive.

Unless otherwise agreed in an Engagement Scope, we will review our pricing and fees from time to time, to determine whether they are still appropriate having regard to the value of the Services being provided. We may also increase our fees annually to take into account inflation.

2.2 Accounts and billing

We will send you a Tax Invoice in accordance with the timeframes specified in the Engagement Scope. You consent to receiving Tax Invoices electronically to your email address.

If you do not pay a Tax Invoice within 30 days of receipt of the Tax Invoice we may charge you interest on the unpaid amount at the rate not exceeding the Cash Rate Target, as fixed by the Reserve Bank of Australia, plus 2%, at the date the Tax Invoice is issued.
If you do not pay our Tax Invoices within the stated period, we may stop work until we are paid.

3. Intellectual Property

3.1 Logo and Trademarks

We may use your name, logo and trademarks in marketing material promoting the Group and its services (including in press releases, on our website and LinkedIn) unless you ask us not to. If we consider an engagement to be sensitive, we will consult with you prior to releasing any press release or other publication in respect of the engagement.

3.2 Intellectual Property

You retain any intellectual property rights in your documents and materials. We retain any intellectual property rights in our documents and materials.

We own all intellectual property rights in any documents or materials we create in the course of performing the Services (Created Work). We grant you a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use any intellectual property in any Created Work for the purposes of receiving the benefit of the Services. You may not permit any third party to copy, adapt or use the Created Work without our consent.

4. Termination

Either party may terminate the Engagement Agreement:

• unless otherwise set out in an Engagement Scope, on one month’s written notice; or
• immediately if the other party breaches the Engagement Agreement, and fails to rectify such breach within a reasonable time, after being requested to do so.

We may terminate the Engagement Agreement immediately if you ask us to act unethically or in a manner that would breach our professional duty, you provide instructions which are deliberately false or misleading, you do not accept our advice, suffer an insolvency event or you otherwise do anything which may damage our reputation.

If an Engagement Agreement is terminated, you will be required to pay our fees and charges for work done, and for expenses and disbursements incurred, up to the date of termination. If you have paid any fees in advance, we are not required to refund any amounts.

On termination, while there is money owing to us for our charges and expenses, we are entitled to retain possession of your papers and documents, unless and until security is provided for our costs. If we have agreed to a fixed term engagement, you agree to pay us for the entire period of the fixed fee, even where you terminate our engagement before the end of the fixed term.

5. Privacy, Confidentiality and Documents

5.1 Personal information and sharing information

In the course of our engagement, we may collect, use, disclose and otherwise handle personal information about you, your employees, directors, officers or representatives. We may also collect personal information about other third parties connected to your engagement.

We may collect this personal information when you provide it to us, or from other sources, such as your agents, government agencies, licensing bodies, public records, court or other records, and other third parties who you refer us to collect personal information about you. The purposes for which we collect, use, disclose and hold personal information is to provide our services to you, carry out credit checks, manage and develop our relationship with you, provide you with information about us and our services, comply with our legal obligations and to otherwise carry out our functions and activities.

In some circumstances, we are required by law to collect personal information, including to comply with identity verification or anti-money laundering requirements (where applicable). If you do not provide us with the required personal information, we may be unable to provide our services to you.

We may collect sensitive information, including health information, in the course of our engagement by you or where you otherwise provide it to us (for example, if you let us know dietary requirements when attending an event). Where you provide sensitive information to us, you consent to us collecting such information.

Where you provide us with the personal information of an individual, where required under applicable privacy laws, you agree to inform that individual of (and where required, obtain that individual’s consent to) our collection and disclosure of that personal information and provide them with a link to our Privacy Policy.

We may disclose personal information for the purposes set out above to:

• HPX Group and its related bodies corporate;
• entities that the Group has licensing or other partnership agreements or arrangements with (including Hamilton Locke (NZ) Limited) (including storing your personal information in databases accessed and used by our related entities);
• government departments and agencies, relevant courts or tribunals where relevant to your engagement;
• other third parties involved in your engagement such as expert witnesses or barristers; and
• our agents and third-party service providers.

We engage third party service providers in connection with the operation of our business, including overseas service providers (located in India and the Philippines) for our administration and business operation purposes.

From time to time, the Group may email you about legal developments, our products, services, events and activities which we believe will be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please use the unsubscribe link in the email, or reply to the e-mail requesting to opt out.

A copy of our Privacy Policy can be found on our website. It contains further information about how we handle personal information, how you can access or correct personal information we hold, and how to make a privacy complaint (and how we will deal with any such complaint). You can contact our Privacy Officer at the below contact details if you have any enquiries about how we handle personal information:

Email: privacy@hpxgroup.com.au

Address: Australia Square, Level 42, 264 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000.

5.2 Sending Material Electronically

Documents sent and received electronically may be copied, recorded, read or interfered with by third parties while in transit and we cannot ensure their security. You release us from any claim you may have as a result of any unauthorised copying, recording, reading or interference with a document transmitted electronically.

5.3 Confidentiality

Each party must keep the confidential information of the other party confidential. Subject to law and the terms of this Engagement Agreement, a party must only use and disclose confidential information of the other party for the purposes of performing the party’s obligations pursuant to this Engagement Agreement.

We may use and disclose your confidential information within our company and the Group, or to our agents, service providers and contractors, for the purposes described in this Engagement Agreement. If we are working with another service provider in relation to the Services, you also consent to us disclosing your information (including confidential information) to that other service provider for the purposes of providing the Services. We may also hold confidential information in our databases and use it internally for knowledge and learning purposes, including to improve our services. We will take reasonable steps to ensure any personal information and confidential information is not used or disclosed other than in accordance with this clause.

5.4 Retention of Your Documents

On termination or completion of an engagement, we will store copies of your documents and records electronically. If requested, we will provide a copy of the documents and records that we have created for you in the course of providing the Services. Any original signed documents will be returned to you. You must make sure that you collect from us any original documents you need to keep for tax or other purposes.

We may destroy the file from seven years after the date of our final invoice. You are required to maintain your own records and documents for any applicable period required by law or required to comply with any regulatory or licence conditions or obligations.

5.5 Corporate Records

If the terms of our engagement require us to only access, edit or retain copies of documents within your IT infrastructure, and therefore we do not have copies of any documents or records that we have created or worked on in the course of providing the Services (Corporate Records):

• you must use your best endeavours to maintain the Corporate Records in an appropriate and secure manner; and
• if requested by us, you must provide access to, and we may access the Corporate Records in connection with:
o the provision of the Services; or
o in connection with any actual or potential claim, demand, hearing, examination, dispute or legal process arising out of, or in any way connected to, the Services.

6. Limitation of liability

Our liability:

• for any failure by us to comply with any consumer guarantee in respect of the supply of our services that are not of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household use or consumption is limited, at our sole discretion, to the resupply of the services again, or the payment of the cost of having the services supplied again; and

• for any loss or damage suffered as a result of or in connection with, our engagement or this Engagement Agreement, which otherwise arises, whether in tort (including negligence), contract or otherwise, must not exceed an amount equal to 10 times the total fees received by us from you in the previous 12 months (exclusive of GST and disbursements).

Notwithstanding anything else in the Engagement Agreement, neither party is liable (whether in tort, including negligence, contract or otherwise) to the other party for any loss of profit or any indirect or consequential loss.

This provision does not exclude, restrict or modify the application of any provision of the Australian Consumer Law (whether applied as a law of the Commonwealth or any State or Territory of Australia).

7. General

7.1 Privilege

You understand that our documents, reports and records are not protected by legal professional privilege unless we provide our Services as a legal service to you through Helios and the requirements for legal professional privilege are met.

7.2 Applicable Law

The Engagement Agreement will be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of New South Wales.

7.3 Unenforceable provisions

If all or any part of the Engagement Agreement is or becomes illegal, invalid or unenforceable in any respect, then the remainder will remain valid and enforceable.

7.4 Acceptance

You will be deemed to have accepted the terms of the Engagement Agreement if you:

• provide instructions to us after receipt of the Engagement Scope; or

• communicate acceptance to us, verbally or by email.

Any terms and conditions contained in a purchase order, or stated on or attached to any document, submitted by you, do not apply to this Engagement Agreement and will have no force and effect.

8. Other things we have to tell you

8.1 Australian Legal advice

This section applies if the Services include legal advice provided by Helios.

Helios Information Security Pty Ltd is an incorporated legal practice under the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW). Its liability is limited to $1.5 million in New South Wales by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

This section sets out your rights as required by the Legal Profession Uniform Law 2014 (NSW) applied as a law of New South Wales by the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (NSW) and the Legal Profession Uniform Law 2014 (Vic) in Schedule 1 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (Vic), and the Legal Profession Uniform Law (WA) applied as law of Western Australia by the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2022 (WA) (together, the Uniform Law) and the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) (Queensland Law) (as applicable).

If the law of Queensland applies to this matter, you have the right to notify us in writing that you require a corresponding law of another State or Territory to apply to this matter. You may also accept or reject a written offer from us that a corresponding law of another State or Territory will apply to this matter.

In accordance with section 174(2) of the Uniform Law and section 308 of the Queensland Law, you have the right to (provided you are not a commercial or government client within the meaning of the Uniform Law or a sophisticated client within the meaning of the Queensland Law):

• request a written report about the progress of your matter and the costs incurred to date or since our last bill (if any);
• negotiate a costs agreement with us. You may want to seek independent legal advice before agreeing to the legal costs we propose to charge in this matter;
• negotiate the billing method with us (for example by reference to timing or task);
• receive a bill of costs from us;
• request an itemised bill of costs within 30 days after you receive a lump sum bill, or a bill that is only partially itemised, from us;
• be notified of any significant change to the basis on which legal costs will be calculated or any significant change to the estimate of total legal costs;
• apply for a costs assessment or apply to have our costs agreement set aside; and
• seek the assistance of the designated local regulatory authority in the event of a dispute about legal costs.