Breach but questions remain — Epik cures

Breaches cured but registrar still needs ICANN’s approval for change of control.

Last Friday, ahead of the long holiday weekend in the U.S., ICANN published an update on the situation at domain name registrar Epik.

The organization stated that Epik had met the terms of a breach notice ICANN sent a month earlier. Epik paid the outstanding accreditation fees and resolved all of the complaints clients sent to ICANN regarding non-renewals and the inability to transfer domains.

ICANN stated it will continue to provide assistance to Epik clients who send complaints to the organization related to these issues.

Next up for Epik is getting ICANN to approve a change of control request for the sale of the registrar. ICANN noted that this might take some time given what happened at the registrar:

The assignment review process allows ICANN to perform diligence of the proposed assignment request to inform the decision of whether to approve the assignment. This is work that ICANN does regularly and the process can take a number of months, depending on complexity. Given the circumstances that preceded the requests for assignment, ICANN expects that conducting diligence for the transaction will be complex, and it make take a number of months.

A key question remains: who bought Epik? The firm will need to reveal its ownership if it wishes to regain the trust of its clients.