IRS Security Falls Short

With the dreaded tax season officially behind us, Americans would like to assume that their personal information is safe and sound in the hands of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This, however, might not be the case. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that offered insight to the possibility that the IRS is not exactly as cyber secure as taxpaying Americans would otherwise like. The detailed GAO report points out the IRS’s shortcomings in physical security and cyber security measures. After auditing the IRS, the GAO found that there were several “significant control deficiencies” in many areas. For example, unauthorized employees and visitors were consistently given access to restricted areas in IRS data centers. Further, IRS servers hosting extremely sensitive data were protected by weak or outdated passwords. This allowed for employees to not only easily access sensitive data, but also share it with other unauthorized coworkers. Among other physical and cyber security grievances, the GAO has concluded that the IRS needs to improve their security. Taxpayers’ most sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, citizenship status, income information, address, names of spouses and dependents is put at risk every single day. Tomorrow it might just end up in the hands of a cyber criminal. To join in our efforts to protect you and your business against the threat of a cyber attack, get connected with Taino Consulting Group at info@tainocg.com.

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2016/04/18/gao-report-taxpayers-data-risk-irs-hands