Primary Certification

Virtual Part II Examination: Candidate Safety & Security

As certifying boards responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have needed to balance safety and public health with candidates' stated desire to take the board examinations they offer. Pivoting quickly to virtual or remote options for examinations has resulted in some concerns about how boards are keeping candidate information secure in new formats.

Here are some ways the ABPMR process for the virtual Part II Examination safeguards candidate privacy and security:

• No third-party proctors.
  The ABPMR Part II Examination proctors and observers for the virtual exam are who they've always been—staff working at the ABPMR office and board directors—and because of this, all candidate information will remain in-house. We are not engaging with any third-party company for proctoring services.

• Candidates use only video conferencing software.
  The ABPMR is not using any external desktop monitoring software during the exam. The only application candidates need to have for the exam is Zoom videoconferencing.

• Exam sessions will be encrypted.
  From the Zoom website: By default, Zoom encrypts in-meeting and in-webinar presentation content at the application layer using TLS 1.2 with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit algorithm for the Desktop Client.

• All sessions are password-protected.
  All candidate examination sessions are password-protected to prevent any non-invited user from joining, or "zoom-bombing" the session.

• All examination session recordings are used internally and destroyed following the examination.
  Examination sessions will be recorded for the purposes of session and examiner observation (only if necessary). These recordings will never be shared outside the ABPMR and are destroyed shortly after the examination.

If candidates have any questions or concerns about privacy or security during the Part II Examination, please contact the ABPMR.