Cyber Independent Testing Laboratory Inc

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
811697643
IRS 990 coverage
2017–2020
Forms available
Form 990 2020, Form 990-EZ 2016
Location
Bridgewater, NJ, USA
Phone
6174808915
Rating
67
Verdict
SUPPORTED
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Consumer Protection

Reported finances

Revenue
$658,545
Expenses
$739,737
Assets
$719,986
Liabilities
$189,126

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2020. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

2 people listed

Executive titles in this filing

  • PEITER ZATKO (President)

Highest reported compensation

  • SARAH ZATKO (Treasurer): $65,000 total reported compensation
  • PEITER ZATKO (President): $37,500 total reported compensation

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2020. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.

Overview

Mission

To work for a fair, just, and safe software marketplace for all consumers and to empower consumers to protect themselves.

What it reported doing in 2020

In 2020 CITL completed the final stages of development on the CITL Automated Dynamic Vulnerability Discovery (CITL-ADVD) tool. CITL_ADVDprovides automated discovery of novel vulnerabilities and defects across thousands of applications and libraries per month, improving the state of the art for automated vulnerability discovery by orders of magnitude. For comparison, a skilled team using traditional fuzzing tools would likely be able to test 10-50 targets a month. Target instrumentation, harnessing, and input generation are fully automated. CITL-ADVD is designed to identify memory corruption, command injection, and other classes of vulnerabilities and defects. CITLs approach changes vulnerability hunting from bespoke targeting and identification, to sifting through 1000s of novel CITL-identified vulns for matching critera. This capability would enable teams to find and fix vulnerabilities in open source Linux software en masse. For example, over the summer, CITL fuzzed all of the Ubuntu-APT repository and reported hundreds of bugs to the relevant open source project maintainers. Open source software is used in most critical infrastructure and corporate entities, often in critical systems, so such an effort would have huge impact for public good. The data sets produced by CITL-ADVD also have great potential for use in academia and research, because it is the first time that detailed data on program behavior can be obtained in such quantities. With these potential uses in mind, CITL started working in 2020 on transitioning its toolsets to partner organizations and on open sourcing the tools, so that anyone who is interested can benefit from these massive improvements to the state of the art.

Operating model

Revenue model
Donor-supported. 61% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
Distribution model
Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.

The verdict

SUPPORTED - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. A relatively small share of voting board members are independent and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.

Rating breakdown

  • Financial Efficiency: 88
  • Transparency & Controls: 92
  • Accountability: 0
  • Sustainability: 23
  • Growth: 60

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
  • Program expense ratio: 97.3%; rating input score 97
  • Fundraising efficiency: Limited

Transparency & Controls

  • Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
  • Pay-setting controls: Limited
  • Foreign activity oversight: Limited
  • Grant itemization coverage: Limited
  • Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
  • Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

  • Independent voting board: 0%; rating input score 0; 4th percentile among comparable filings
  • Governance controls: 0 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 0
    • Conflict-of-interest policy: Fail
    • Whistleblower policy: Fail
    • Document-retention policy: Fail
    • CEO compensation review process: Fail
    • Other executive compensation review process: Fail
    • Form 990 shared with the board: Fail
    • Board meeting minutes documented: Fail
    • Audit committee oversight: Missing
    • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

  • Operating margin: -12.3%; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.97; rating input score 37; 37th percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.26; rating input score 31; 31st percentile among comparable filings
  • Officer compensation ratio: 13.9%; rating input score 28; 28th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: 4.9% per year; rating input score 100; 56th percentile among comparable filings
  • Revenue growth: -4.3% per year; rating input score 0; 10th percentile among comparable filings
  • Asset growth: 10.7% per year; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings

Details

  • Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 97.3% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: 0 of 2 board members independent · 0 of 9 filing controls reported
  • Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $720K in reported program spending
  • Leadership: top reported pay $65K · 2 people listed
  • Highest-paid contractors: 1 contractor listed · $545K reported
  • Consistency: 20 of 20 current checks pass
  • Schedules: 4 filed schedules · includes major donors
  • Filing history: 4 filing years from 2017 to 2020
  • Contacts: How to reach this organization
  • Money network: 2 filed money-flow records
  • Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
  • People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.

Key Signals

Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.

Grant-readiness screening is separate from the live rating, not a measure of program quality. Review the source records before making a grant decision.

  • High — Accountability: Independent voting board scored 0/100.
  • High — Accountability: Governance controls: 8 of 8 not reported.
  • High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 11/100.
  • High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 37/100.
  • High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 28/100.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 31/100.
  • High — Grant Readiness: Automatic revocation: this organization had its federal tax-exempt status automatically revoked.