Governments and the citizens they protect are increasingly moving towards zero risk tolerance. Regulators are introducing stricter and more comprehensive regulations and reporting requirements. Businesses are therefore required to demonstrate legal and regulatory compliance. Almost all countries have rules and regulations related to safety for almost all goods. There are greater requirements regarding environmental performance, from recycling to packaging to energy consumption. Compliance with regulations is therefore no longer meeting specification, but it can relate to the lifecycle of a product. Accredited certification is used to assess conformity against a standard, a code of practice or regulatory requirements. Regulators can set overall policy requirements or detailed technical requirements and rely on the accredited certification bodies to ensure compliance. The award of a certificate or a mark demonstrates compliance.

Accreditation is the independent evaluation of certification bodies against recognized standards to ensure their impartiality, competence and consistency. Regulators are increasingly relying on independent third party declarations of compliance to support their enforcement and monitoring activities as they demonstrate compliance with legislation and performance against industry benchmarks and performance indicators. As major procurers of goods and services, Governments also rely on accredited certification to inform their buying decisions, as it provides confidence that suppliers have appropriate controls in place to deliver to requirements