Taxpayers’ personal information is put at risk because Internal Revenue Service managers and employees are not adhering to established security policies and procedures, said the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). Nevertheless, the IRS has taken some steps to improve security, it added.
For the IRS to make greater strides in improving computer security and protecting personally identifiable information, managers and employees must be aware of the security risks inherent to their positions and consider the security implications of their day-to-day activities.
“It is clear that some IRS executives are not holding managers and employees accountable for carrying out their responsibilities and are not ensuring managers and employees are aware of the security risks associated with their positions,” said Michael Phillips, deputy inspector general for audit, in the report released Aug. 14.
Executives must clearly communicate expectations that procedures will be followed and take the appropriate actions when they are not, the report states.
IRS lost at least 490 computers with sensitive data in 387 incidents between 2003 and 2006. Of those, TIGTA determined that 176 incidents involved taxpayer data. Of the remaining 211 incidents, TIGTA found sufficient details in 126 incidents to determine that personal information for at least 2,359 individuals was involved. The auditors were unable to identify the nature of the data loss and the identity of taxpayers for the other 85 incidents because of a lack of detail in the incident write-ups. Employee negligence contributed to some of the losses.
In samples from IRS offices, employees were disregarding e-mail policy and not encrypting personally identifiable information on their laptop computers. Managers also did not pull employees' access to systems they no longer needed when they transferred to other offices, received new responsibilities or left the IRS, TIGTA found.
Some security employees did not follow security procedures, which left the IRS network vulnerable to insider threats. For example, they did not change blank passwords to system administrator accounts on database applications or default log-ons and passwords used for installing applications. They also did not update patches or remove unneeded services. The IRS and its contractors were not integrating security controls into its modernized systems.
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