This communication is regarding the recent IIA Global Website outage, which may have caused inconvenience for all IIA members. Below is IIA President & CEO Richard Chambers’ message to all IIA members, dated December 2, 2020.

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Dear IIA Members,

I would like to update you about our recent website outage and thank you for your patience and understanding. Last week, we put all websites into “maintenance mode” after receiving automated system alerts of an attempted ransomware attack. While the decision to go offline may have created a disruption in services to you and other members, we are increasingly confident that our actions, combined with our existing firewalls and other safeguards, successfully blocked any attempt to further access our systems and that member, customer, and other data was not compromised.

Those existing security systems and procedures, including a fast response from our IT team, quickly isolated the situation and averted any serious harm. However, as you may be well familiar with incident response protocols within your own organizations, we want to ensure a safe and secure environment for all users, not only now but going forward. That’s why we have taken the opportunity, while our systems have been down, to conduct thorough and repeated system scans for any vulnerabilities and also to implement additional safeguards at the recommendation of cyber security and forensic experts, to assure a comprehensive approach to the situation.

This afternoon, after numerous scans and analysis, we began bringing up certain systems, including:

• The IIA’s Certification Candidate Management System (CCMS)
• OnDemand Training
• International Conference 2020 OnDemand Sessions
• IIA Bookstore
• New-user registration and password reset

Additional services will be brought online over the next few days, including full restoration of our websites. You can find direct links to restored services on our website maintenance page at www.theiia.org.

The impact of the outage, I’m sorry to say, did mean the postponement of certain testing and training programs. Those previously registered for exams during this period will be contacted to reschedule at no cost and we have extended the testing window through the end of the year. If you were scheduled to take an exam during this period and have not yet received a communication about rescheduling, please contact our service provider Pearson VUE directly at www.pearsonvue.com/iia/contact.

We know how important it is for you to access IIA services and products. We are committed to providing a secure and well-monitored system for all member and customer engagements. Again, thank you for your understanding and patience.

Sincerely,

Richard F. Chambers CIA, QIAL, CGAP, CCSA, CRMA
President and Chief Executive Officer