Accreditation Process
NAAB accredits registrars to ISO/IEC Standard 17021. This standard specifies requirements for registrars providing audit and certification of management systems. Being accredited demonstrates to regulators, the marketplace, and stakeholders that the registrar has met the NAAB accreditation requirements and are periodically monitored for compliance.
Benefits of Accreditation
Accreditation is a means to reduce costs, redundancy and eliminate trade barriers. Accreditation provides formal recognition to competent organizations. It provides a conduit for regulators and industry to find reliable products and services to meet their specific needs.
Most important, accreditation assures industry and government decision-makers that accredited organizations are competent and their results can be relied on.
Why Attain Accreditation?
A certificate issued by an accredited registrar, aka certification body (CB), that has the NAAB logo provides assurance that this is an accredited certificate. An accredited certificate includes both registrar's logo and the NAAB logo.
Why does this matter? Accreditation is the means by which an authoritative body, such as NAAB, provides formal recognition to registrars that they are competent to carry out specific management systems certification evaluation tasks.
In addition to offering accredited certificates, accredited registrars may also offer unaccredited certificates or certificates for standards for which the registrar is not accredited. If you want to rely on an accredited certificate, you should understand the qualifications of the registrar that issued the certificate and whether the registrar (and certificate) is accredited.
What About Private Registrars?
Private registrars, aka non-accredited, seldom operate in accordance with requirements in accordance with ISO/IEC standards. Private registrars many times offer a certificate without an audit or without any real understanding of an organization's internal step-by-step processes. Such a certificate is of questionable value for the certified organization and its customers.
Additionally, private registrars will often use an auditor that has no experience and no accredited formal training in accordance with ISO/IEC standards.