After a company applies for an ISO certification, how can it verify the authenticity of the certificate?

Whether before or after applying for an ISO certificate, companies have always worried about whether the certificate they obtained is genuine or fake; during bidding, qualification reviews also verify the authenticity of the certificates provided by companies, and your competitors may check even more thoroughly (if supervision and review are not timely, competitors may expose it, causing you to miss a 10 million bidding project).

No matter where a company obtains its ISO certificate, it can be checked on the CNCA official website to determine the authenticity of the certificate. The steps are as follows:

http://cx.cnca.cn/CertECloud/result/skipResultList CNCA query website: click Certification Results → Comprehensive Certification Results Query → enter certificate-related information to query.

There are basically two types of query results: successful query or no results found. Next, let's analyze the possible outcomes.

First: Successfully found certificate information on the CNCA website, but the certificate may not be valid.

For example, the certificate may be in pending annual review status, revoked status, or suspended status. Not long ago, one of my clients missed out on a major project because the supervision was not timely, and during bidding, competitors found that the certificate had not undergone annual review. This serves as a lesson.

Second: No information found, but it may not necessarily be fake.

1. After passing the ISO certificate audit, the company may only have an electronic version. It means the certificate is almost ready, but the certification body has not yet uploaded the data to the CNCA website, so the query returns no results. Wait a few days and check again.

2. The certification body may not have intended to upload the certificate at all. This situation is rare nowadays. The reason for not uploading could be that the certification body violated regulations during the certification process. Once uploaded, relevant information would be available, and CNCA might conduct spot checks. The certification body would then face penalties, and in severe cases, its qualification could be revoked.

Let's analyze two more special cases.

1. The company found a certificate through the query, but the certificate is fake.

The company used a fake agency for certification, and the query website provided is from the fake agency. Therefore, the company can find the certificate, but the only website recognized for verifying authenticity is CNCA's official site—there is no second one.

2. The company found a certificate through the query, the certificate is genuine, but it is not recognized.

Don't be confused. The company indeed obtained a genuine certificate and found it through a query, but it is still not recognized. This situation often occurs when the company applies through a foreign certification body that has not filed with CNCA.

Some foreign certification bodies are indeed legitimate and successful abroad, but once in China, the rules are different. To conduct certification business here, they must first file with CNCA; otherwise, the certificates they issue are invalid in China. After certification, the query is also through the foreign certification body's website, not CNCA's official site. (These 15 agencies are illegally conducting certification activities, issuing invalid certificates, and companies should be cautious.)

Therefore, even if you have a genuine certification certificate, you still cannot find it on the CNCA website, so it is still judged as a fake certificate. In China, the only recognized query results are those from the CNCA official website.

Finally, a friendly reminder: fake agencies often have several characteristics: low prices, no on-site audits, fast turnaround times, etc. (With certification bodies being revoked one after another, how should companies choose a reliable certification body?). Especially foreign agencies, their certification efficiency is faster and cheaper than domestic ones, so companies should proceed with caution.