ISO in full, The International Organization for Standardization, is an international standard setting body that is an integration of over 150 countries for the development of technology and product standards. It facilitates and overlooks standardized production for consumers ensuring you of a safe, efficient, more secure, more resilient and cleaner-environment friendly development of products.
It was established in 1946 at the Institute of Civil Engineers in London where a total of twenty-five countries that sent their delegates. The Committee on Conformity Assessment (CASCO) is an ISO committee that resolves the problems relating to conformity assessment. It establishes the guidelines that third-parties use to ascertain if a company meets the laid-out ISO standards.
ISO’s Certification, Accreditation and Compliancy.
The Importance of getting a certification from the International Organization for Standardization is that it offers an autonomous validation that ascertains your company’s conformity to a given set of standards. It goes without say due to data security vulnerabilities that have evolved in the recent times and the importance of showing your auditors and clients that the companies are protected.
They are certain ISO important definitions and standards that are important for you to know and grasp to fully understand the functions of the International Organization for Standardization. They are certain certification companies that perform certain audits and then eventually issue out certificates. What then is accreditation? For the certain certification bodies to be able to perform the audits for the ISO, they need to have a license for this function. Therefore, the certification bodies need to be compliant with the ISO standards in order to get accredited for the certification of management systems.
Compliancy can, therefore, be defined as meeting the laid out requirements and eventual following them for the best functioning of this standards. Certification is when the third parties follow the CASCO laid out criteria to conduct internal audits to see if organizations meet the standard policies put out by the ISO. Accreditation is therefore when the licensed and approved bodies conduct internal audits. It’s important for you to know that certified bodies are usually one in each country and therefore their reviews in the eyes of the ISO are trustworthy.
DOCUMENTS REQUIRED FOR ISO CERTIFICATION.
For you to be ISO certified, they are certain standards that need to be attained. The process comes in varieties and in different ways. They are different certification standards each having different documentation hence making the compliancy and certification process hectic and tedious for you.
The types of certification standards depend and the top certification standards for IT include: ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and ISO 31000.
Documents required for ISO 9001 certification
For the ISO 9001 certification, documents you require include the Quality Management system (QMS) an internationally recognized management system. In quality management, a company has to properly document the policies, procedures and processes it follows for quality control. The ISO 9001 audits and assesses systems and products. This certification standard requires you to meet customer expectations and customer satisfaction. The documentation has to meet mandatory and non- mandatory information. Where, mandatory documents you need to have control procedures for documents, records control of non-conforming procedures and preventive and corrective action methods.
Documents required for ISO-27001 certification.
This type of document certification focuses on the development of an information security management system (ISMS). These security systems ensure for privacy, integrity and the availability of information to manage any risk that may arise for you.
ISMS scope, data security policies, risk assessment and mitigation policies, statement of applicability, collection of assets, access control policy, operating procedures, incident management procedure, business continuity procedure, safe system engineering policies, supplier security policy and compliance requirements are some of the important documents you need to consider when it comes to this ISO standard.
Documents required for ISO-31000 certification.
Enterprise risk management (ERM), which calls for oversight for the executive management and from the board of Directors, is the standard required for this ISO certification. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) informs you that when selecting a framework to manage ISO 31000, other frameworks may also be in line with ISO standards and requirements. This provides for a ‘two for one’ strategy.
What is the Cost for ISO certification?
Being an expensive process, you are advised to achieve the necessary training for your employees for the maintenance and execution of the certification. Hidden costs coming up from more labor power being put into program the execution rather than regular jobs and employment of consultants to assist in execution of compliance process are also other costs you might incur for the ISO certification process.
The initial assessment may cost around $2700 to $3375 while monitoring costs range from $1350 to $2025. This may cost you something ranging from $4050 on the lower side to $5400 on the upside.
Author Bio
Ken Lynch is an enterprise software startup veteran, who has always been fascinated about what drives workers to work and how to make work more engaging. Ken founded Reciprocity to pursue just that. He has propelled Reciprocity’s success with this mission-based goal of engaging employees with the governance, risk, and compliance goals of their company in order to create more socially minded corporate citizens. Ken earned his BS in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT.
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