If anti-counterfeiting solutions are to be truly effective in securing supply chains,helping public authorities ensure legal trade and fostering consumer confidence, then they must comply with the relevant internationally established performance requirements, otherwise known as ISO Standards.
ISO is the International Organization for Standardization. It is based in Geneva and is the world’s largest and most international standard- setting body, issuing technical standards that cover almost every industry (1). Its members are the national standards bodies of most of the world’s countries.
ISO Standards are sets of rules and criteria that have been internationally agreed by experts. They come in a variety of forms (e.g. product standards, guidelines, codes of practice and test methods), but at their core ISO Standards are effectively formulas that describe ‘the best way of doing something’. They are numbered according to the format ‘ISO nnnn:yyyy – title’, where nnnn is the number of the Standard, yyyy the year of publication and title is the title of the Standard.
There are a number of ISO Standards aimed at ensuring anti- counterfeiting technologies are fit for purpose. Most are geared towards technology providers and contain criteria on how to design and implement solutions. However, there are two ISO Standards that are intended for users. They are:
ISO 22383:2020 – a set of guidelines to help enterprises decide which authentication solution is right for them by defining performance criteria and providing methods for assessing effectiveness;
ISO 22384:2020 – a set of guidelines to help brands establish and monitor a plan to protect their products against different types of fraud, such as counterfeiting,copying, refill, grey market, etc.
Two of the Standards geared towards technology providers are also worth a brief mention. These are: ISO 22378:2022 (guidance on making object identification systems and authentication systems more interoperable) and ISO 22381:2018 (guidance on making independently functioning identification and authentication systems interoperable).
ISO Standards are subject to strict copyright restrictions; only abstracts and informative sections of the documents are publicly available. To access the full content of an ISO Standard, you would have to purchase the Standard from ISO or an associated national standard body.
With that in mind, this chapter presents an overview of the areas and principles covered in particular in ISO 22383:2020 (which is the most relevant in the context of this Guide) and gives a brief introduction to the other Standards mentioned, with the aim of providing a starting point for discussions, decision-making and possible implementation.
(1) Telecommunications is covered by the International Telecommunication Union.