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Immigration law firms that depend on INSZoom, one of the most widely used immigration case management platforms, remained without full access to the system on Thursday, nine days after its owner, Mitratech, abruptly took it offline. The company said a forensic investigation was still under way and declined to say when full service would return.
Mitratech suspended its hosted INSZoom environment at 5 p.m. Central time on Nov. 3 after detecting what it described as potentially suspicious behavior, according to the company’s public status page and updates it has sent to customers. It brought in outside forensic experts to work with its internal teams and has since referred to the event as an anomaly under review. It has not called it a breach.
Mitratech’s first public notice, posted to its INSZoom status page on Nov. 4, said only that access had been suspended as a precaution while teams worked out how to return to normal operation. By Nov. 5, the page attributed the continued outage to a potential security risk.
In updates sent Wednesday and Thursday, Mitratech said it had not identified any compromise of customer data so far and had found nothing that would require it to notify customers. It cautioned that those findings could change and said its legal and compliance teams were closely involved. The company said it expects the third-party forensic report by the end of this week.
The public status page has been more guarded. Its most recent entry, posted Nov. 10, neither confirms nor denies that any data was compromised, says the forensic review is nearing its conclusion, and gives no estimated restoration time. The page still lists the incident as unresolved.
Until that report is complete, Mitratech said, any restoration timeline it offered “would be a guess.”
Partial access, piece by piece
Since Nov. 6, firms have been able to reach their case files through a separate “limited access” environment, but only from internet addresses that Mitratech has individually reviewed and approved. Online e-filing returned on Nov. 7, though firms using INSZoom’s desktop e-filing add-on had to uninstall it and reinstall a new version.
For most of the outage, Mitratech warned customers that changes made in the limited environment might not be kept. On Wednesday it reversed that guidance, saying the new environment is permanent and that work done there will carry forward. The same day it restored ad hoc reports and its Advanced Reports (Reports 3.0) tool for U.S. and global customers.
Much of what connects firms to their clients remains off. According to Mitratech’s public status page, limited access is restricted to firms’ internal staff, leaving out external users such as corporate HR contacts and the foreign nationals whose immigration cases are being handled. The company said it was still deciding what other functions could be safely brought back.
Firms work around the gap
Government filing deadlines are not suspended for software outages, leaving firms to keep cases moving without the tool many of them use to prepare forms, track deadlines and collect documents from clients and employers.
Getting into the limited environment has been its own hurdle. Firms must email their office, VPN and home internet addresses to Mitratech and wait for approval. Mitratech acknowledged on Wednesday that the process was cumbersome, said it had added staff to every team involved, and said it now accepts dynamic and non-U.S. addresses, which it reviews to confirm they belong to customers.
Company cites caution
In its Wednesday update, Mitratech said customer frustration over the length of the outage was valid. It said the rapid growth of AI and other technology had raised the stakes for data security, and that it chose to take INSZoom offline and verify the integrity of customer data before restoring service. The company said that choice was not an excuse for the disruption.
Mitratech, based in Bee Cave, Texas, acquired INSZoom in 2020. It has been sending customers updates twice a day on weekdays and posting broader developments on a public status page, which it said firms may share with their clients.
The company said it will announce a timeline for full restoration once the forensic report is in.
This report is based on Mitratech’s public status page and the status updates it has sent to INSZoom customers since the outage began. Mitratech has not issued a public statement beyond these updates.
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