ISO/IEC 17065

ISO/IEC 17065 · ISO / IEC

The international standard a certification body must meet to issue credible certificates, the line between a real certifier and a badge mill.

01 What It Is

ISO/IEC 17065 is the international standard setting the requirements a body must meet to certify products, processes and services credibly. It is not a standard for dogs, hotels or food, but for the organisations that certify them. It is the technical definition of what makes a certifier trustworthy, and it underpins the credible certifications mapped elsewhere in this atlas.

02 What It Covers

The standard requires a certification body to demonstrate competence, structural impartiality and freedom from conflicts of interest, to operate consistent and documented assessment processes, and to provide a proper complaints and appeals route. In effect it separates an organisation qualified to issue a meaningful certificate from one simply awarding its own logo by its own rules.

03 How It Is Checked

A certification body does not self-declare conformity to 17065. It is assessed and accredited against the standard by a national accreditation body, such as UKAS or ANAB, which is itself held to a further standard for accreditation bodies. That layered checking, the certifier accredited and the accreditor peer-reviewed, is what gives an accredited certificate its weight.

04 Why It Matters

Every “certified” or “approved” claim raises the same question: who says, and on what authority. ISO/IEC 17065 is the answer at the certifier level, the reason a properly accredited mark means more than a self-issued one. It is the quiet backbone beneath the difference between a standard that has been independently checked and one that has not.

Primary sources

ISO/IEC 17065:2012iso.org