Guidelines 01/2018 on certification and identifying certification criteria in accordance with Articles 42 and 43 of the GDPR

SECTION 2  SCOPE OF THE CERTIFICATION MECHANISM AND TARGET OF EVALUATION (TOE)

a. Is the scope of the certification mechanism (for which the data protection criteria shall be used) clearly described?

b. Is the scope of the certification mechanism meaningful to its addressed audience and not misleading?

• Example: A “Trusted Company Seal” suggests that the processing activities of an entire company have been audited, even though only specified processing operations, e.g. the online payment process, are actually subject to certification. The scope is therefore misleading.

c. Does the scope of the certification mechanism reflect all relevant aspects of the processing operations?

• Example: A “Privacy Health Mark” must include all evaluation data concerning health in order to address requirements pursuant to Article 9.

d. Does the scope of the certification mechanism allow meaningful data protection certification taking into account the nature, the content, the risk of the related processing operations?

• Example: If the scope of the certification mechanism focuses only on specific aspects of processing operations, such as the collection of data, but not on the further processing operations, such as processing for the purpose of creating advertising profiles or the management of data subject’s rights, would not be meaningful for data subjects.

e. Does the scope of the certification mechanism cover personal data processing in the relevant country of application or does it address cross border processing and/or transfers?

f. Do the certification criteria sufficiently describe how the ToE should be defined?

• Example: A “Privacy Seal” offering a general scope only requiring “a specification of the processing subject to certification” would not provide clear enough guidance on how to set and describe a ToE.

• Example: A (specific) scope, “The Privacy Vault Seal”, addressing secure storage should describe in detail the requirements to meet this scope in its criteria, e.g. definition of vault, system requirements, mandatory technical and organisational measures (TOMs). In that case the scope can clearly define the ToE.

• (1) Do the criteria require the ToEto include an identification of all relevant processing operations, illustration of data flows and a determination of the ToE’s area of application?

• o Example: A certification mechanism offers certification of processing operations of controllers under theGDPR without specifying further the area of application (general scope). The criteria used by the mechanism requires the applicant controller to determine the targeted processing operation (ToE) in terms of data types, systems and processes deployed.

• (2) Do the criteria require from the applicant to make clear where the processing that is subject to evaluation starts and ends? Do the criteria require the ToE to include interfaces where interdependent processing operations are not included as part of the ToE? And is this satisfactorily justified?

• o Example: A ToE describing in sufficient detail the processing operation of a web based service such as including the registration of users, the provision of service, invoicing, logging of IP-addresses, interfaces to users and to third parties and excluding server hosting (yet including processing and TOM agreements).

g. Do the criteria guarantee that the (individual) ToEs are understandable to its audience, including data subjects where relevant?