Version: 4
Date: 18/06/2024
Pulso Europe BV, hereinafter referred to as the “Company”, strives to comply with applicable laws and regulations related to Personal Data protection in countries where the Company operates. This Policy sets forth the basic principles by which the Company processes the personal data of consumers, customers, suppliers, business partners, employees and other individuals, and indicates the responsibilities of its business departments and employees while processing personal data.
This Policy applies to the Company and its directly or indirectly controlled wholly-owned subsidiaries conducting business within the European Economic Area (EEA) or processing the personal data of data subjects within EEA.
The users of this document are all employees, permanent or temporary, and all contractors working on behalf of the Company.
The following definitions of terms used in this document are drawn from Article 4 of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation:
The Pulso Europe Management Committee has overall responsibility for the implementation of this policy.
The data protection principles outline the basic responsibilities for organisations handling personal data. Article 5(2) of the GDPR stipulates that “the controller shall be responsible for, and be able to demonstrate, compliance with the principles.”
Personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
Personal data must be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes.
Personal data must be adequate, relevant, and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed. The Company must apply anonymization or pseudonymization to personal data, if possible, to reduce the risks to the data subjects concerned.
Personal data must be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; reasonable steps must be taken to ensure that personal data that are inaccurate, having regard to the purposes for which they are processed, are erased or rectified in a timely manner.
Personal data must be kept for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed.
Taking into account the state of technology and other available security measures, the implementation cost, and likelihood and severity of personal data risks, the Company must use appropriate technical or organizational measures to process Personal Data in a manner that ensures appropriate security of personal data, including protection against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alternation, unauthorized access to, or disclosure.
Data controllers must be responsible for and be able to demonstrate compliance with the principles outlined above.
In order to demonstrate compliance with the principles of data protection, an organisation should build data protection into its business activities.
See the Fair Processing Guidelines section.
See the Fair Processing Guidelines section.
The Company must strive to collect the least amount of personal data possible. If personal data is collected from a third party, the Data Protection Officer must ensure that the personal data is collected lawfully.
The purposes, methods, storage limitation and retention period of personal data must be consistent with the information contained in the Privacy Notice. The Company must maintain the accuracy, integrity, confidentiality and relevance of personal data based on the processing purpose. Adequate security mechanisms designed to protect personal data must be used to prevent personal data from being stolen, misused, or abused, and prevent personal data breaches. The Data Protection Officer is responsible for compliance with the requirements listed in this section.
Whenever the Company uses a third-party supplier or business partner to process personal data on its behalf, the Data Protection Officer must ensure that this processor will provide security measures to safeguard personal data that are appropriate to the associated risks, e.g. misuse of personal data, unauthorized disclosure of personal data, data breaches, etc.
For this purpose, the Processor GDPR Compliance Questionnaire and Supplier Security Policy must be used.
The Company must contractually require the supplier or business partner to provide the same level of data protection. The supplier or business partner must only process personal data to carry out its contractual obligations towards the Company or upon the instructions of the Company and not for any other purposes. When the Company processes personal data jointly with an independent third party, the Company must explicitly specify its respective responsibilities of and the third party in the relevant contract or any other legal binding document, such as the Supplier Data Processing Agreement.
Before transferring personal data out of the European Economic Area (EEA) adequate safeguards, e.g. the Standard Contractual Clauses, must be used including the signing of a Data Transfer Agreement, as required by the European Union and, if required, authorization from the relevant Data Protection Authority must be obtained. The entity receiving the personal data must comply with the principles of personal data processing set forth in Cross Border Data Transfer Procedure.
When acting as a data controller, the Data Protection Officer is responsible to provide data subjects with a reasonable access mechanism to enable them to access their personal data, and must allow them to update, rectify, erase, or transmit their Personal Data, if appropriate or required by law. The access mechanism will be further detailed in the Data Subject Access Request Procedure.
Data Subjects have the right to receive, upon request, a copy of the data they provided to us in a structured format and to transmit those data to another controller, for free. The Data Protection Officer is responsible to ensure that such requests are processed within one month, are not excessive and do not affect the rights to personal data of other individuals.
Upon request, Data Subjects have the right to obtain from the Company the erasure of its personal data. When the Company is acting as a Controller, The Data Protection Officer must take necessary actions (including technical measures) to inform the third parties who use or process that data to comply with the request.
Personal data must only be processed when explicitly authorised by the Data Protection Officer.
The Company must decide whether to perform the Data Protection Impact Assessment for each data processing activity according to the Data Protection Impact Assessment Methodology.
At the time of collection or before collecting personal data for any kind of processing activities including but not limited to selling products, services, or marketing activities, the Data Protection Officer is responsible to properly inform data subjects of the following: the types of personal data collected, the purposes of the processing, processing methods, the data subjects’ rights with respect to their personal data, the retention period, potential international data transfers, if data will be shared with third parties and the Company’s security measures to protect personal data. This information is provided through the Privacy Notice.
Where personal data is being shared with a third party, the Data Protection Officer must ensure that data subjects have been notified of this through a Privacy Notice.
Where personal data is being transferred to a third country according to Cross Border Data Transfer Policy, the Privacy Notice must reflect this and clearly state to where, and to which entity personal data is being transferred.
Where sensitive personal data is being collected, the Data Protection Officer must make sure that the Privacy Notice explicitly states the purpose for which this sensitive personal data is being collected.
Whenever personal data processing is based on the data subject’s consent, or other lawful grounds, the Data Protection Officer is responsible for retaining a record of such consent. The Data Protection Officer is responsible for providing data subjects with options to provide the consent and must inform and ensure that their consent (whenever consent is used as the lawful ground for processing) can be withdrawn at any time.
Where collection of personal data relates to a child under the age of 16, The Data Protection Officer must ensure that parental consent is given prior to the collection using the Parental Consent Form.
When requests to correct, amend or destroy personal data records, the Data Protection Officer must ensure that these requests are handled within a reasonable time frame. The Data Protection Officer must also record the requests and keep a log of these.
Personal data must only be processed for the purpose for which they were originally collected. In the event the Company wants to process collected personal data for another purpose, the Company must seek the consent of its data subjects in clear and concise writing. Any such request should include the original purpose for which data was collected, and also the new, or additional, purpose(s). The request must also include the reason for the change in purpose(s). The Data Protection Officer is responsible for complying with the rules in this paragraph.
Now and in the future, The Data Protection Officer must ensure that collection methods are compliant with relevant law, good practices and industry standards.
The Data Protection Officer is responsible for creating and maintaining a Register of the Privacy Notices.
The responsibility for ensuring appropriate personal data processing lies with everyone who works for or with the Company and has access to personal data processed by the Company.
The key areas of responsibilities for processing personal data lie with the following organisational roles:
The members of the management make decisions about, and approve the Company’s general strategies on personal data protection.
The Data Protection Officer (DPO) or any other relevant employee, is responsible for managing the personal data protection program and is responsible for the development and promotion of end-to-end personal data protection policies, as defined in Data Protection Officer Job Description;
The Legal Affairs Department/Counsel together with the Data Protection Officer, monitors and analyses personal data laws and changes to regulations, develops compliance requirements, and assists business departments in achieving their Personal data goals.
The IT manager, is responsible for:
The Marketing Manager or Communication Manager, is responsible for:
The Human Resources Manager is responsible for:
The Data Protection Officer is responsible for:
Identifying a Lead supervisory authority is only relevant if the Company carries out the cross-border processing of personal data.
Cross border of personal data is carried out if:
or
If the Company only has establishments in one Member State and its processing activities are affecting only data subjects in that Member State than there is no need to establish a lead supervisory authority. The only competent authority will be the Supervisory Authority in the country where Company is lawfully established.
The members of the management need to identify the main establishment so that the lead supervisory authority can be determined.
If the Company is based in an EU Member State and it makes decisions related to cross-border processing activities in the place of its central administration, there will be a single lead supervisory authority for the data processing activities carried out by the Company.
If the Company has multiple establishments that act independently and make decisions about the purposes and means of the processing of personal data, the members of the management need to acknowledge that more than one lead supervisory authority exists.
When the Company is acting as a data processor, then the main establishment will be the place of central administration. In case the place of central administration is not located in the EU, the main establishment will be the establishment in the EU where the main processing activities take place.
If the Company does not have a main establishment in the EU, and it has subsidiarie(s) in the EU, then the competent supervisory authority is the local supervisory authority.
If the Company does not have a main establishment in the EU nor the subsidiaries in the EU, it must appoint a representative in the EU, and the competent supervisory authority will be the local supervisory authority where the representative is located.
When the Company learns of a suspected or actual personal data breach, the Data Protection Officer must perform an internal investigation and take appropriate remedial measures in a timely manner, according to the Data Breach Response and Notification Procedure. Where there is any risk to the rights and freedoms of data subjects, the Company must notify the relevant data protection authorities without undue delay and, when possible, within 72 hours.
The Data Protection Officer is responsible for auditing how well business departments implement this Policy.
Any employee who violates this Policy will be subject to disciplinary action and the employee may also be subject to civil or criminal liabilities if his or her conduct violates laws or regulations.
This Policy is intended to comply with the laws and regulations in the place of establishment and of the countries in which Pulso operates. In the event of any conflict between this Policy and applicable laws and regulations, the latter shall prevail.
| Record name | Storage location | Person responsible for storage | Controls for record protection | Retention time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Subject Consent Forms | Intranet | Data Protection Officer | Only authorized persons may access the forms | 10 years |
| Data Subject Consent Withdrawal Form | Intranet | Data Protection Officer | Only authorized persons may access the forms | 10 years |
| Parental Consent Form | Intranet | Data Protection Officer | Only authorized persons may access the forms | 10 years |
| Parental Consent Withdrawal Form | Intranet | Data Protection Officer | Only authorized persons may access the forms | 10 years |
| Supplier Data Processing Agreements | Intranet | Data Protection Officer | Only authorized persons may access the folder | 5 years after the agreement has expired |
| Register of Privacy Notices | Intranet | Data Protection Officer | Only authorized persons may access the folder | Permanently |
The Compliance Management Committee consists of six (6) members.
The Compliance Management Committee shall remain in effect for the duration of this Policy.
The Compliance Management Committee shall undertake the following responsibilities:
Each member may, at his/her discretion, propose to the Compliance Officer to invite other members or consultants to attend meetings of the Compliance Management Committee. For sake of clarity, any consultant so invited will not take part in any decision and will not be deemed to be a member of the Pulso Europe Compliance Management Committee.
Marcel Willems, Partner
Vincent Verbruggen – dpo@pulso-group.com
Anke Luts
Inge Van den Brande
Inge Van den Brande
Sofie Vuerstaek
Sigrid Landeloos
Wouter Deboes