Whistleblowing software in Austria — scored ranking
Independent scored ranking of whistleblower-reporting tools for Austria under the HinweisgeberInnenschutzgesetz (HSchG), the local transposition of EU Directive 2019/1937. 25-criterion rubric fixed before scoring; every score carries evidence.
Of the 3 platforms scored against HSchG, EthicsPortal ranks first with 52 of 56 points, ahead of Hintbox at 37.
Platforms covering it
4
Sold only here
0
EU data centre
3
Self-serve sign-up
3
Scored against the rubric
3
The law a channel in Austria has to satisfy
Austria transposes EU Directive 2019/1937 through HSchG. A platform has to satisfy the national text, not only the Directive, so check obligations against the statute rather than against a vendor's compliance claim.
The finding in Austria is what is absent. No Austrian vendor appears in this ranking at all. The three scored platforms are a German product, a Greek one, and the publisher’s own — and none of them hosts data in Austria.
That is unusual for a market with a 50-employee threshold and an obligation in force since February 2023. Germany, next door and on the same language, supports thirty-two scored platforms. Austrian buyers are effectively choosing from the German market, which works linguistically and does not answer the residency question if an Austrian authority ever asks it.
Two of the three name Austria or the HSchG in their stated coverage, and neither is Austrian: one is a German platform that lists Austria alongside Germany, the other is ours. The third describes national coverage generically and does not name the act.
This is a thin edition and it is published as one. More platforms will appear as scoring completes, and an Austrian vendor that publishes its hosting country would enter near the top of the modifier on day one.
This edition uses two layers:
the 50-point base rubric, which stays country-agnostic and scores the product itself: legal workflow depth, reporter experience, handler workflow, security posture, and commercial clarity;
the 6-point Austria modifier, which rewards an explicit HSchG reference, a named hosting country or EU provider, and a genuine German-language surface.
Poland · Whistleblowing channel hosted on Hetzner in Germany. Flat €60/month plan, with a published DORA evidence set.
52 / 56
Base 47 · Bonus 5 · Tier P+R+H
Legal
16/16
Reporter
0/10
Handler
10/10
Security
6/8
Commercial
5/6
Strengths
Article-level legal framing: /compliance/ enumerates Directive 2019/1937 Articles 4, 6, 8, 9, 16, 18, 19–21 and links to a dedicated page for each of the 27 EU transpositions
All 27 EU national whistleblower laws are named on public /whistleblower-laws/<country>/ pages with official source citations
Oral reporting (Art 9(2)(b)) is built into the portal as in-browser voice recording and is privacy-engineered: the raw audio is automatically pitch-shifted, only the anonymized clip is ever served, and the original recording is purged after processing (fail-closed — nothing is exposed to handlers until anonymization succeeds)
Report categories are tagged to specific Directive Art 2(1) Union-law domains, with the article reference shown as a handler-side badge while reporters pick plain-language categories
Structured intake: five optional, Directive-aligned questions (relationship to org per Art 4, source of knowledge, incident timing, prior reporting, retaliation concern per Art 19) presented as a skippable guided step, surfaced to handlers and the PDF export with retaliation flagged as an urgency badge — a built-in default set where most tools leave these to per-org custom-field configuration
Three role tiers (member / admin / viewer): viewer is a read-only seat for auditors and external counsel that sees every report plus the full audit trail without any write or management path
GDPR Art 20 portability: admins can export the full organization dataset (reports, messages, attachments, with encrypted fields decrypted for portability) as a ZIP; export and download are audit-logged and the ZIP auto-purges after 7 days
Real deadline tracking: 7-day acknowledgement and 3-month feedback deadlines with overdue/due-soon tracking and a lifecycle stepper in both reporter and handler views
Configurable retention (12/24/36/48/60 months) with automatic purge of expired closed reports; open reports left inactive for 18 months auto-close so the retention clock starts (GDPR Art 5(1)(e) storage limitation), closing the open-forever gap
Two-factor reporter access: case reference (WB-XXXX-XXXX) plus a reporter-chosen 6-digit passcode, session-gated inbox. Reporters can also download a PDF copy of their own report from the follow-up portal (audit-logged)
Audit log surfaced to handlers on each report; append-only at the database level
Modern stack with no end-of-life liabilities
Transparent monthly pricing (€60/mo) with 14 live product locales (13 EU official languages — bg, de, el, en, es, fr, hr, it, nl, pl, pt, ro, sl — plus Luxembourgish)
Multi-handler case assignment: each report can be assigned to a handler, admins see all reports and members see only assigned, assignment changes are audit-logged, and deactivated members are auto-unassigned from open reports
Handler-set case priority (low / normal / high / urgent) recorded at assessment as an audit-logged change and surfaced as a badge on the report list, plus a priority breakdown in the exportable compliance report
SCIM 2.0 provisioning so an identity provider (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID) can provision case handlers and — the core value — auto-deprovision them the moment someone leaves the directory; admins generate, rotate, and enable/disable a per-organization token and pick the default role
SAML 2.0 single sign-on so staff authenticate through the organization's identity provider (Okta, Microsoft Entra ID); configured per organization, covers one or more email domains, with optional enforcement (require SSO for those domains) and optional just-in-time account provisioning on first sign-in — the authentication half of the SSO + SCIM enterprise-identity pair
Published ISO 37002:2021 guidance-alignment map (/iso-37002/) walking the standard's operating clauses against shipped features, alongside the ISO 27001 Annex A self-assessment
Published DPA grants the Controller an explicit right to object to subprocessor changes (§6.4, 30-day notice + termination remedy) and commits to 72-hour breach notification (§6.6); /trust/ publishes contracting party, backups, RTO/RPO, and session lifecycle
DORA evidence set published for financial-entity buyers: /dora/ lists Article 30(2) and 30(3) provisions with status and location, supplies the register-of-information fields under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2956 including the S19 (Cloud services: SaaS) classification, names the ICT service supply chain, and links a signable contractual addendum at /dora-addendum/
Zero-AI commitment codified contractually: DPA §6.10 prohibits transmission of personal data to any LLM or AI inference provider; /subprocessors/ lists no AI sub-processor
Weaknesses
Audit log is append-only but not hash-chained
Only 14 portal-facing languages (13 EU official languages + Luxembourgish) against 24 EU official languages
No ISO 27001 certification of EthicsPortal itself (only Hetzner infrastructure is certified)
Pay-first with 30-day money-back rather than an upfront self-serve free trial
Role tiers are org-scoped, not per-case ACLs: the viewer role adds the auditor seat, but a handler's report visibility is still governed by assignment/participant scoping rather than a per-case permission model
Standout
Article-level Directive framing paired with a 27-page country-law reference and privacy-engineered oral reporting, all surfaced in the live product alongside working deadline, retention, two-factor passcode, audit-log, voice-anonymization, and subprocessor-notification flows.
25 criteria across 5 categories, weighted by criterion count. Each criterion scores 0, 1, or 2 — rendered as ○ / ◐ / ●. Maximum base score is 50. Austria-specific bonuses add up to 6 on top (modifier, not part of base).
Access tiers
Each tool carries an access tier reflecting what was testable:
P — public pages only (marketing, pricing, security, reporter URL).
P + R — above plus a test report submission.
P + R + H — above plus handler / admin dashboard (via free trial or demo).
Criteria that cannot be verified at the current tier score 0 with the evidence line "Requires handler tier" or "Not documented publicly". Scores depressed by tier, not by product quality, are explicitly flagged on each tool's profile.
Data residency
Every country modifier scores residency the same way:
2 — Data residency in the ranked country itself.
1 — EU or EEA residency is disclosed, but not in the ranked country.
0 — No EU or EEA residency is disclosed.
Integrity guarantees
The rubric was fixed before scoring. No criterion was added mid-test to favour or punish a specific tool.
Every score carries evidence — a URL, a quote, or a file path — visible in each tool's profile.
Tools operated by the publisher are scored by the same rubric. Placement is by score, not by construction.
Each tool carries a Last reviewed date and is re-tested at least annually.
Vendors can dispute a score or submit evidence of a shipped fix using the contact address in the site footer. Any resulting change is dated on the respective tool profile.
Law applied
HinweisgeberInnenschutzgesetz (HSchG), in force 25 February 2023 (the Austria transposition of EU Directive 2019/1937). Tools are scored against the Directive first and against the local law's specifics second.
Coverage note
This ranking covers 3 tools with a scoring block published. Additional tools are being added as scoring completes. Unscored tools will appear in the ranking once they have a published scoring block.
Platforms covering Austria
2 of 4 publish an entry price. The rest require contact with sales before a figure is given.
Whistleblowing software in Austria — scored ranking
