Dear AUDITOR partners and interested parties,
Today we would like to inform you about the current status quo regarding the approval of the AUDITOR certification.
The necessary informal review of the certification by European data protection supervisory authorities is currently in its final stages. During the informal review, the AUDITOR consortium was able to incorporate some helpful comments into the criteria catalog.
Unfortunately, the informal review also shows that some interpretations of the GDPR have not been fully coordinated and discussed at the European level. In particular, this concerns the still open discourse with regard to the so-called “household exception” (Art. 2(2)(c) GDPR). The Member State examiners disagree as to whether and under what conditions a certification can be applied to privately used cloud services (in the sense of the B2C market). In order to settle this discourse, a European expert group is expected to be consulted at the beginning of September, so that a consensus could be found in the course of September and a final statement made regarding the scope of AUDITOR (B2B and B2C or only B2B). Until this point of discussion is resolved, the AUDITOR data protection certification will not be able to enter the formal approval process. As (the) first data protection certification for cloud services, AUDITOR must therefore (continue to) face some still unresolved issues and obtain a decision.
According to current planning, AUDITOR will therefore be submitted to the final European review at the end of September, which has a maximum duration of 14 weeks. We initially conservatively anticipate a final decision by the European Data Protection Board in early / mid-January 2024, with any outstanding issues to be addressed by the AUDITOR consortium and confirmed by the data protection supervisory authority.
Completion of the national approval of AUDITOR certification is hence expected in March / April 2024 according to current planning. If there are any changes to the schedule, we will of course inform you. Fortunately, the German federal ministry BWMK and the DLR have agreed to extend the AUDITOR project until April 2024 to enable a successful completion of the national approval.
Best regards
the AUDITOR consortium
