Privacy Policy

Last Updated August 2023

Who we are

Trilateral Research Ltd (“we” or “us”) is a UK limited liability Company. We are registered in England and Wales under company number 8698690 and have our registered office at One Knightsbridge Green, London, SW1X 7QA.

In 2017, Trilateral Research opened an office in the Republic of Ireland as a wholly-owned Limited Company, registered under company number 616396, with registered offices in FDW House, Blackthorn Business park, Coes Road, Dundalk, Co. Louth, A91 RW26, Ireland, trading at Marine Point, 2^nd Floor, Belview Port, Waterford, X91 W0XW, Ireland.

This Privacy Notice applies to both our UK and Irish entities as the data controllers of your personal data and inquiries regarding this privacy notice and data subject rights can be made via DPO@trilateralresearch.com.

Scope of this Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice aims at informing website visitors, our business and research partners, and other stakeholders about how we process personal data. We are committed to processing personal data responsibly, securely, and proportionally throughout our business.

How we collect your personal data

We collect personal data both directly and indirectly from individuals including:

Directly. We obtain personal data directly from individuals in a variety of ways, including but not limited to obtaining personal data when:

you subscribe to our newsletter/s
register to attend meetings and events we host and during your attendance at such events
visit our offices
apply for open employment vacancies
when we are establishing a business relationship
when we are performing professional services pursuant to a contract
you participate in a form or survey for the purpose of proposal and/ or tender writing that we perform either independently or in collaboration with you
Indirectly. We obtain personal data indirectly about individuals from a variety of sources, including:

recruitment services and agencies who provide us with candidate data
our business partners
our research partners
our clients
public and open data sources such as public registers (e.g., Companies House), news articles and internet searches
social and professional networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn)
clients who engage us to perform professional GDPR compliance and DPO services were the transfer of personal data is necessary for us to fulfil those service contracts

The personal data types we collect

We collect the following types of personal data about individuals, including:

General personal data types, including:

Contact details (e.g., name, company name, job title, work and mobile telephone numbers, work and personal email and postal address)
Professional information (e.g., job and career history, educational background and professional memberships, published articles, areas of professional interest)

Special categories of personal data, which we collect with explicit consent, including:

Dietary restrictions and identification documents when registering for in-person events that may reveal religious beliefs or health preferences
Expense forms submitted for internal reimbursement from attendance at events that include bank account information

The lawful bases for processing your personal data

We process personal data on the following bases:

Consent – when you provide us with your personal data directly, for example when you subscribe to our newsletter or apply for an open vacancy with us
Contract – When processing is necessary to the performance of a contract with you;

Legal obligations – We may process personal data in order to meet any legal obligation requiring us to do so
Legitimate interests– We process personal data when it is necessary for us to achieve the following legitimate interests:
- Enhancing our research and consulting service delivery for clients; and
- Undertaking direct marketing and provide insights and speciality knowledge we believe is welcomed by our clients, research partners, subscribers and individuals who have interacted with us.

What we do with your personal data

We process your personal data with the purpose of:

Providing consulting services (GDPR compliance services and DPO as a service)
Promoting our professional services, including research, consulting and product development) to existing and prospective clients
Sending invitations and providing access to guests attending our events and webinars
Administering, maintaining and ensuring the security of our information systems, applications and websites
Seeking qualified candidates, and forwarding candidate career inquiries to our Human Resource team
Processing online requests or queries, including responding to communications from individuals, or requests for proposals and quotations
Complying with legal and regulatory obligations

How we secure your personal data when we process it

We have put appropriate technical and organisational security policies and procedures in place to protect personal data (including sensitive personal data) from loss, misuse, alteration or destruction. We aim to ensure that access to your personal data are password protected. We encrypt all data stored at our central location and data are restricted only to those who need to access it. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information. We install and regularly update all security and anti-virus software in use on all of our systems. Please be aware that the transmission of data via the Internet is not completely secure. Whilst we do our best to try to protect the security of your personal data, we cannot ensure or guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site.

Do we share personal data with third parties?

We may occasionally share personal data with trusted third parties to help us deliver efficient and quality services. When we do so, we ensure that recipients are contractually bound to safeguard the data we entrust to them before we actually share the data. We may engage with several or all of the following categories of recipients:

Parties that support us as we provide our services (e.g., cloud-based software services such as Dropbox, Microsoft Sharepoint)
Quickbooks for HR and financial accounting services
Our professional advisers, including lawyers, auditors and insurers
Payment services providers
Marketing services providers
Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies (e.g., HMRC) or to other third parties as required by, and in accordance with applicable law or regulation
Recruitment service providers
The European Commission when we are required by them to do so in relation to our work with them on EC funded FP7 and H2020 projects

Do we transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area?

It is our preference to have personal data processed within the European Economic Area (EEA) as much as possible. We store personal data on servers located in the EEA, and the US. We may engage with service providers in the US to manage the payment of salaries, bookkeeping and accounting purposes. When transferring data to the US, we rely on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and relevant Standard Contractual Clauses in accordance with the Commission Implementing Decision 2021/914. We might also engage service providers located in the UK, relying on the adequacy decision adopted by the European Commission in June 2021.

Do we use cookies?

Our websites does use cookies. Where cookies are used, a statement will be sent to your browser explaining the use of cookies. To learn more, please refer to our cookie policy.

Your data protection rights

You have the following rights in relation to your personal data that we process. You can exercise your rights by emailing us at DPO@trilateralresearch.com, including:

Right to Withdraw Consent– You can withdraw your consent that you have previously given to one or more specified purposes to process your personal data. This will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. It may mean we are not able to provide certain products or services to you and we will advise you if this is the case.
Right of access– You can ask us to verify whether we are processing personal data about you, and if so, to have access to a copy of such data
Right to rectification and erasure– You can ask us to correct our records if you believe they contain incorrect or incomplete information about you or ask us to erase your personal data after you withdraw your consent to processing or when we no longer need it for the purpose it was originally collected
Right to restriction of processing– You can ask us to temporarily restrict our processing of your personal data if you contest the accuracy of your personal data, prefer to restrict its use rather than having us erase it, or need us to preserve it for you to establish, exercise, or defend a legal claim. A temporary restriction may apply while verifying whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to process it. You can ask us to inform you before we lift that temporary processing restriction
Right to data portability– In some circumstances, where you have provided personal data to us, you can ask us to transmit that personal data (in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format) directly to another company
Right to Object – You can object to our use of your personal data for direct marketing purposes, including profiling or where processing has taken the form of automated decision making. However, we may need to keep some minimal information (e.g., email address) to comply with your request to cease marketing to you
Right to make a complaint to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/) regarding any concerns you may have about our data handling practices.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information or to exercise any of your other rights. This helps us to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. No fee is required to make an initial request unless your request is clearly unfounded or excessive. Depending on the circumstances, we may be unable to comply with your request based on other lawful grounds.

How long do we retain personal data?

We retain personal data to provide our services, stay in contact with you and to comply with applicable laws, regulations and professional obligations that we are subject to. Unless a different time frame applies as a result of business needs or specific legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements, we retain personal data for a period of 5 years.

Typical examples of different time frames include but are not limited to those relating to our obligation to retain data concerning European Union research projects (H2020, Action Grants, FP7, etc.) for up to 10 years after the end of the project (unless further retention is requested by auditors), and the retention period of HMRC-related data, which is 7 years.

Where the records and documentation containing personal data have been collected within the delivery of an EC project, the Commission/Agency will process it in compliance with Regulation No 45/2001 (archived for at least 5 years after the balance is paid unless there are ongoing procedures such as audits, investigations or litigations, in which case the evidence must be kept until these end, even if this is longer than five years). After the expiry of the retention period, and unless further legitimate grounds for retention arise, we will dispose of personal data in a secure manner.

Do we link to other websites?

Our websites may contain links to other sites, including sites maintained by Trilateral Research that are not governed by this Privacy Notice. Please review the destination websites’ privacy policies before submitting personal data on those sites. Whilst we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content, security, or privacy practices employed by other sites.