Certifications and assurance
What we hold today, and what we can send you for a supplier assessment. We have deliberately kept this page to things we can evidence.
What we hold
| Certification | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 9001 Quality management |
Design, manufacture and supply of geotechnical and rock mechanics testing systems | Certified |
A copy of the current certificate is available from info@gdsinstruments.com, including the certificate number, certification body and expiry date.
Certification is not the same as security
A certificate records that an auditor saw a management system on a given date. It does not tell you whether a manufacturer publishes advisories, fixes vulnerabilities promptly, or supports a product for a decade — and those are the things that decide your actual exposure. We would rather be judged on the substance of the other pages on this site. That said, we recognise certification is often a procurement requirement, and we are happy to discuss what would satisfy your process.
Other product compliance
This site covers cybersecurity, which is one of several regimes a GDS instrument sits under rather than the whole of our product compliance. A customer assessing us sees one product and one manufacturer, not a set of separate regulatory exercises, so it is worth saying where the boundary falls.
Our equipment is CE and UKCA marked in respect of electromagnetic compatibility and electrical safety, assessed under the legislation governing those. Declarations of conformity and test reports for a given product are available from info@gdsinstruments.com.
The Cyber Resilience Act does not disturb any of that. From December 2027 it adds cybersecurity to the same CE marking rather than replacing an existing assessment, so EMC and electrical safety evidence stays where it is and forms no part of what we will self-assess against Annex I.
Group context
GDS is part of Judges Scientific plc, a group of scientific instrument businesses. Group-level policies apply to us, including on information security and acceptable use of AI tools. Group governance does not replace our own product security responsibilities, which sit with GDS as the manufacturer.
Supplier assessments and questionnaires
If you need to assess GDS as a supplier, this site is designed to answer most of what is normally asked. Where you need something more:
- Send us your questionnaire at security@gdsinstruments.com. We aim to return completed questionnaires within fifteen working days.
- Point us at the specific question if a standard framework covers it, and we will answer against that framework rather than paraphrasing.
- Documents available on request: ISO 9001 certificate, an SBOM for your product version, a VEX statement for a specific CVE, our disclosure policy as a PDF, a VPAT accessibility conformance report, and the hardening guidance referenced in secure development.
We will tell you when the answer to a question is no. A questionnaire returned with every box ticked should worry you more than an honest gap.