Different competences — one mandate
Seven bodies: three standing committees, three expert councils and a research and practice centre. Each has its own rules of procedure, membership and area of responsibility.
How the Association is organised
The committees take decisions and answer for them. The expert councils supply industry depth. The centre provides the evidence base. The Accreditation Committee sits in a separate legal entity — impartiality requires it.
Three committees, three distinct roles
Expert councils and the evidence base
The committees take the decisions, but cannot know every industry to the same depth. That is the work of the expert councils: they prepare the industry substance of requirements, which is then put to a vote.
- Integrity and traceability of the supply chain
- Security of warehouse operations
- Access control and protection of goods in transit
- Control of hazards in production
- Storage and transport conditions
- Product traceability and batch recall
- Data protection and access management
- Continuity and recovery of processes
- Security in supplier relationships
The research arm of the Association. It carries out applied work at the intersection of security disciplines — where the industry councils work separately, and a threat arrives across the boundary between them.
The centre prepares methodological material, consolidates practice in the application of assessment schemes and provides the evidence base for the requirements adopted by the committees. Its work answers to a simple fact: corporate security does not divide into isolated functions.
Why the functions sit in different bodies
The structure of the Association looks more complex than it might be. There is one reason: combining these functions in the same hands strips the assessment result of its meaning.
The Association neither certifies organisations nor advises them. Certification is carried out by accredited certification bodies — independent participants in the market. The Association is responsible for the rules under which this is done, and for making public who works under those rules and on what basis.