To prepare international standards in the field of dependability, in all appropriate technological areas, including those not normally dealt with by IEC Technical Committees. Dependability is the ability to perform as and when required and is time dependent in application. Dependability can be expressed in terms of core attributes of availability, reliability, maintainability and supportability that are tailored to application-specific functional and service attributes.

TC 56 standards are related to products, processes and management activities.  The standards provide systematic methods and tools for dependability assessment, technical risk assessment and management of services and systems throughout their life cycles.

Dependability is a technical discipline that is important in quality management, asset management risk management and financial decision making. It is managed through life cycle processes involving availability and its core performance attributes of reliability, maintainability and supportability, as well as application specific performance attributes such as recoverability, survivability, integrity and security for products and service dependability evaluation.