FITSI Non-Profit Tax Status Accepted

 February 14, 2011

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has confirmed that the Federal IT Security Institute (FITSI) is “exempt from federal income tax under section 501 (c ) (6) of the Internal Revenue Code.”  The ruling is effective from November, 2009 when the organization was incorporated.

“When we started FITSI at the end of 2009, we registered as a non profit,” said Jim Wiggins, FITSI’s Executive Director.  “But consideration of a tax exempt application at the IRS can take many months.  We are obviously very pleased to receive this confirmation of our non-profit status.”

Beginning in 2010, FITSI held a series of IT security certification exams for federal employees across the country.  Currently the organization has around 700 members.

FITSI offers role-based certification to four groups of federal IT security professionals: Managers, Designers, Operators and Auditors.  FITSI was established for the purpose of creating a process by which federal civilian, military and contractor personnel could demonstrate their role-based understanding of the Federal Body of Knowledge (FBK) that governs the IT security requirements of federal systems.  This understanding is an important step in providing improved security for the federal IT systems upon which we all have come to depend.

Interested parties can view the letter that the IRS provided FITSI to verify its tax exempt status at the following location:  http://www.fitsi.org/Aboutus/FITSI_Tax_Exempt_Status.pdf.