ICANN Announcements

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Annual IANA Functions Audits Validate ICANN Systems Controls

29 March 2018

LOS ANGELES – 29 March 2018 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has completed audits of the Public Technical Identifiers (PTI) Registry Assignment and Maintenance Systems (RAMS) and the Root Zone Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) services provided as part of the IANA functions. International accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) conducted the audits for the period of 1 October 2016 through 30 November 2017.

For the fifth consecutive year, a Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 audit of PTI's RAMS shows that the ICANN organization has the appropriate controls in place to ensure the security, availability, and integrity of IANA request processing.

For the eighth consecutive year, SOC 3 certification has been achieved for the management of the DNSSEC root key signing key, which is the trust anchor of the domain name system. The SOC 3 certification demonstrates that effective security controls are maintained to manage the root key signing key. The certificate is publicly available at: http://iana.org/audits.

SOC audits evaluate an organization's controls in relation to "trust services principles and criteria" and are managed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). In August of 2017, the ICANN org solicited proposals for an independent auditor to conduct future SOC audits. After careful consideration, RSM US LLP was selected to conduct these audits beginning 1 October 2017. "PwC has done a great job as our audit firm since 2010, and guided us as we established an audit culture within our organization. Industry best practices suggest periodically rotating auditors to gain a fresh external perspective, and we determined it was the right time to make the switch to ensure ongoing community confidence in our service delivery. We are grateful for the many years of service that PwC has provided and welcome the team from RSM," said Kim Davies, ICANN's Vice President of IANA. Kim Davies also serves as President of the Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), the affiliate of ICANN that provides the IANA functions.

About ICANN

ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.