IRS Cut Its Cyber Security Staff by 11% Over Four Years

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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Unless you have been under a rock all week, you should have heard that the IRS was hacked and 100K accounts were breached. At a time when account hacking is at an all-time high, the IRS has steadily been cutting back on its in-house cyber security division and diverting funds to out-sourced contractors.

In 2011, the IRS employed 410 people in its cyber security organization, but by 2014 the headcount had fallen by 11 percent to 363 people.
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Technically, the IRS wasn't hacked. The people gained access had gathered taxpayer info from other sources then used that info to get past the IRS's security questions for those taxpayers.
 
based upon my experience this month I'd say a lot of the hacking was due to phishing, I had at least a handful of phone calls warning that I was going to be audited and they can settle right now.
 
Watjalukinat said:
Technically, the IRS wasn't hacked. The people gained access had gathered taxpayer info from other sources then used that info to get past the IRS's security questions for those taxpayers.
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That still pretty low security for IRS. its way to common to the sites just to relay and a singler repeatable password.. IRS in other countries uses one time password schemes so even if you keylog a user you will not be able to login on your own.
but IRS here works in pretty old and obsolete ways.
 
Only 267 agents in the "Affordable Care Act - Program Management Office"? Whatever happened to those 16,500 armed IRS agents that all the conspiracy theorists promised us were going to be kicking down our doors and stealing our kids?
 
This is talking about those that work directly for the U.S. government. They said they were moved to contractors. That is a good thing. There is more accountability, and generally more capability. I concur with the phishing explanation, sometimes you just can't help users enough.
 
Kinda hard for the IRS to operated when they have their budget slashed every year. I think it has been 5 or 6 consecutive years now congress has cut their budget and they have had to chop over 13000 employees. People may not like them, but they provide an invaluable service. I know a lot of people fear them, but I remember some years back when Bush and Congress passed some insanely written employee tax break and no one who owned a business could figure out how to apply it. We called the IRS and they went over it and showed us how we could apply it and not get screwed. I have also had two businesses audited and both times ended up getting more money back. No one likes paying taxes, but without them we don't have roads, don't have a military and don't have countless other necessities that allow our country to operate. If you don't like how the money is spent... complain to congress.
 
Yeah our budgets have been slashed, losing lots of employees just to normal attrition (lots of retirees) and no budget to hire anyone new. then ACA is playing havoc at the IRS, it's a nightmare. Dept of Treasury, Dept of Defense, and Dept of Justice are supposed to be the only really funded federal depts. All others can and should be state level.
 
Still a very bloated security team. A large multinational company usually has a team of a dozen to half a dozen.
 
EchtoGammut said:
Kinda hard for the IRS to operated when they have their budget slashed every year.
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Yet they still have plenty of money to go after conservative groups, hand out large bonuses to employees, make Star Trek and Gilligan's Island themed training videos.

That's why their budget has been cut, but instead of cutting the waste, they make cuts to phone support, security, etc., and continue the wasteful spending.
 
Sometimes the wasteful spending isn't really what it is. The IRS is like any other Government entity when it comes to it's budget. Every year it asks for X Dollars, Has to justify the amount, and then get's whatever it get's. At the end of that year if it has a surplus, it's budget will usually get cut by that amount even if the conditions that caused the surplus are not likely to repeat themselves. The term is "Use it or Lose it"

End of year is where the Government spends so much money of stupid shit. Army organizations buy new furniture for office areas, TVs for soldier living areas, have parties, play paintball, spend money on a new add campaign, whatever they can think of. The good idea fairy has no limits when you have a chunk of money to spend and only a few weeks to decide how to spend it.

So if you are a politician and you want another guy's job, well if that other guy sits on some committee that overseas the IRS all you have to do to make him look bad, is look at the end of year spending for the organization he is a Committee Member over. These oportunities are a simple byproduct of our Government is funded.
 
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