Personal information is valuable to digital bad actors. The IRS is a sweet resource for fraudsters looking for a goldmine of information on a large number of consumers. Income, refunds, addresses, bank accounts and more reside in the domain of the aging computer infrastructure of the IRS.
In 2015, hackers accessed the personal information of 104,000 taxpayers through the IRS, including social security numbers. By accessing the “Get Transcript” function on the site, hackers were able to exfiltrate returns and other tax information. And let’s not forget, a social security number is forever. Attempted hacks on the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, as well as other agencies, are common and efforts in that regard are not likely to subside anytime soon.
As the pandemic put pressure on the global workforce, working remotely reduced exposure to the virus and kept the lights on in businesses emptied of onsite workers. The IRS was no different. According to a report from the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), 20,000 IRS employees were working remote as of March 2020. By September of the same year, 60,700 workers were offsite.
Because of the increased risk of data breach with remote workers, TIGTA looked at how the IRS handled the leap to remote work during the pandemic. Overall, no recommendations were made in the report, which outlined the standards put in place by the IRS for its employees. Some of those standards include:
In addition to the IRS, tax professionals, such as accountants and tax preparers, are prime targets for cyber mayhem. Ensure that your corporate accounting firm or accountant is cyber strong. If you use a tax preparer, ask about the steps they take to prevent tax fraud and theft of personal information. Make smart choices about sharing confidential information and use best practices in storing and securing your own financial information. The digital world is great, until it isn’t.
The tax group at Robert J. Fedor, Esq., LLC represents business and individual clients responding to civil or IRS tax audit, offshore tax allegations, or employment tax disputes. When straightforward tax advice is needed locally or internationally, call 800-579-0997 or contact us for a free consultation. We have offices in Cleveland and Chicago.