EthicsGlobal

The intake side: how a reporter actually submits — web form, anonymous dialog, phone/voice, languages, accessibility — and whether anonymity survives first contact.

0 — A web form that is an email in disguise: no anonymous route, no way to reach the reporter afterwards.

3 — An anonymous form exists but the dialogue ends there — no secured mailbox for follow-up questions, few languages, desktop-only.

5 — Anonymous two-way dialog via a protected mailbox, a usable set of languages, mobile-friendly; voice or phone intake missing or an add-on.

8 — Multiple channels (web, voice message or hotline, QR entry points), broad language coverage with translation support, accessibility considered, and the anonymous dialog is first-class rather than bolted on.

10 — Intake engineered around the frightened reporter: every channel anonymous-capable, dozens of languages, WCAG-conscious, no app install or account required, and the vendor documents how the reporter's identity is kept out of the channel itself.

The case worker's side: triage, statutory deadlines (7-day acknowledgment, 3-month feedback), role separation, audit-proof documentation.

0 — Reports land in an inbox; deadlines, roles and history live in a spreadsheet next door.

3 — A case list with status fields, but deadlines are manual, permissions are all-or-nothing, and the record of who did what is thin.

5 — Deadline tracking with reminders for the statutory clocks, case notes and attachments, basic role separation between case handlers; reporting on the caseload is limited.

8 — Automated statutory clocks, conflict-of-interest handling (excluding implicated case handlers), complete tamper-evident case history, retention and deletion rules applied per case, and management reporting.

10 — A case system an external investigator can rely on: enforced workflows, full audit trail, legally aware retention/deletion automation, evidence handling, and statistics that survive a regulator's questions.

How specifically the product implements EU Directive 2019/1937 and national transpositions (HinSchG et al.) — not whether the marketing mentions them.

0 — Generic feedback software wearing a whistleblowing label; no reference to the legal obligations it claims to satisfy.

3 — The directive is invoked in marketing but the mapping is vague; deadline rules, documentation duties and retention periods are the customer's problem.

5 — The statutory duties are implemented as product features — acknowledgment and feedback clocks, documentation, deletion after the retention period — for at least one national law, with guidance for the rest.

8 — Multiple national transpositions supported with their differing details, legal templates and process guidance maintained by named counsel or documented review, and updates when the law moves.

10 — The product is a legal instrument: per-country rule sets kept current, documented legal review, guidance for edge cases (group-wide channels, external ombudsman setups), and the vendor shows its homework in public.

Whether the confidentiality promise is engineered and evidenced: encryption, metadata handling, penetration tests, certifications.

0 — Security is a paragraph of adjectives; no certificates, no test reports, no statement on metadata.

3 — TLS and encryption at rest asserted, but nothing audited: no ISO 27001 or equivalent, no published pentest, silence on IP and metadata logging.

5 — A current ISO 27001 (or equivalent) certificate for vendor or hosting, end-to-end encryption of report content claimed with some technical detail, an explicit no-IP-logging statement.

8 — Certified ISMS covering the product, regular third-party penetration tests attested, documented end-to-end encryption architecture, metadata minimization explained, security contact and disclosure policy published.

10 — Assurance a hostile auditor accepts: current certificates with visible scope, recurring pentest summaries public, cryptographic architecture documented, anonymity analysed against the operator itself — the vendor can answer "how would you unmask a reporter?" with "we cannot, and here is why".

Whether one contract can serve a corporate group: separate channels per legal entity, central oversight, ombudsman access, white-labeling.

0 — One company, one channel; a group buys and administers N separate instances.

3 — Multiple channels under one account, but no separation of case access per entity and no consolidated view.

5 — Per-entity channels with separated case handlers and a group-level overview; branding per entity is basic; external counsel access possible.

8 — Real multi-tenant group structure: per-entity channels, languages and branding, delegated administration, external ombudsman roles, group reporting that respects entity boundaries.

10 — Group compliance as architecture: hundreds of entities manageable centrally, per-country legal rule assignment per entity, white-label reporting pages, and access separation strong enough to satisfy each subsidiary's works council.

Where reports about people actually live and under whose law — entity, hosting, subprocessors, DPA. In this category the data is by definition the most sensitive a company holds.

0 — Non-EU entity, non-EU-default hosting, no public DPA or subprocessor list — for whistleblowing data.

3 — A DPA exists and an EU region is available on request or on top tiers; subprocessor exposure to US CLOUD Act reach is broad or undocumented.

5 — EU hosting is the default, DPA and subprocessor list published; the vendor or a critical subprocessor is still within non-European jurisdictional reach.

8 — EU entity, EU hosting with named data centers, published subprocessor list free of content-touching non-EU processors, DPA and TOMs public.

10 — Jurisdictionally clean end to end: European ownership, EU-only hosting and subprocessors for report content and metadata, on-premises or sovereign-cloud options, and the whole chain documented publicly.

Whether an obligated company can compute the real invoice — per entity, per employee band, per year — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — An entry price exists, but the tiers most obligated companies need are unpriced, or the maths is obscured by employee bands, per-report fees or mandatory setup charges.

5 — Most tiers carry real numbers with billing period and VAT treatment stated, but at least one commonly needed capability — extra entities, extra languages, phone intake — hides in an unpriced add-on.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with employee-band boundaries, entity rules and setup fees stated; only genuine corporate-group contracts are custom.

10 — Complete price computability: every tier, band, add-on and renewal rule public, so the invoice for a 60-employee company and a 5-entity group is a two-minute exercise.