What is BS ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025 - Age Assurance Systems, Part 1: Framework about?
BS ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025 provides an internationally agreed framework for age assurance systems. These systems help determine whether someone meets an age requirement for a service, product, platform, or venue.
It establishes a common language for age assurance and defines characteristics for evaluating different systems. It applies to both digital and physical settings, without requiring full identity verification in every case.
The standard distinguishes between four age assurance methods:
- Age verification, using documented evidence to establish age.
- Age estimation, using biological or behavioural characteristics to estimate age.
- Age inference, drawing an indication of age from other information or patterns.
- Successive validation, carrying out continuing eligibility checks rather than relying only on an initial check.
It also introduces the concept of age-related eligibility. This separates the decision about whether you meet an age condition from the method used to support that decision.
Who is BS ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025 - Age Assurance Systems, Part 1: Framework for?
The standard is for organizations that design, operate, procure, regulate, or assess age assurance systems.
It may be particularly relevant if you work in:
- Online platforms and social media.
- Streaming, gaming, gambling and digital services.
- Retail, e-commerce, hospitality and age-restricted supply chains.
- Events and physical venues.
- Payments, identity, onboarding and verification services.
- Age assurance technology development.
- Certification, audit, and conformity assessment.
- Legal, privacy, compliance, trust and safety.
- Government, regulation and public-sector policy.
- Civil society and child protection.
Whether you set requirements, select a provider, develop a solution, or evaluate performance, the standard gives you shared terminology and a common reference point.
What does BS ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025 - Age Assurance Systems, Part 1: Framework cover?
The standard provides a technology-neutral framework for age assurance systems. It does not prescribe one method, provider, or age threshold for every situation.
It covers five core characteristics:
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Functionality: whether the system performs the function it claims to provide.
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Performance: whether it operates consistently and fairly across user populations.
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Privacy: whether it collects and processes only the information that is necessary.
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Security: whether it can resist threats such as spoofing, presentation attacks and injection attacks.
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Acceptability: whether its use is inclusive, transparent and proportionate.
By assessing these characteristics together, you can consider more than a system’s accuracy alone. You can also examine how it addresses privacy, security, performance, and user acceptability. The framework can support age-related eligibility decisions across online services, platforms, retail settings and physical venues.
Why should you use BS ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025- Age Assurance Systems, Part 1: Framework?
Age assurance can involve different terminology, technologies, and expectations. This can make systems difficult to specify, compare, procure and assess.
BS ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025 gives you a common framework that can help you:
- Use clear, consistent terminology when discussing age assurance.
- Define the characteristics you expect from an age assurance system.
- Compare different approaches without assuming one method suits every context.
- Build clearer procurement and system requirements.
- Evaluate functionality, performance, privacy, security and acceptability together.
- Support more precise policy, contractual, and compliance discussions.
- Reduce reliance on full identity verification where it isn’t required for the eligibility decision.
- Apply a shared international reference across sectors and jurisdictions.
Because the standard is technology-neutral, you can use it with different technical approaches. It focuses on the characteristics an age assurance system should demonstrate, rather than mandating a particular solution.
This can help you make more informed decisions while considering effective age assurance alongside privacy, security, inclusivity, transparency and usability.