The Treasury Department‘s inspector general for tax administration has found that as of March 25, the Internal Revenue Service identified suspected tax refund fraud cases valued at $72 million driven by the introduction of three data elements to the Return Review Program.TIGTA said in a report issued Sept. 30 that it evaluated the IRS’ Information Technology Program and found that security of taxpayer information continues to be the top performance and management issue that IRS faces.
TIGTA also found weaknesses in the domains of identity and access management, configuration management and information security continuous monitoring as part of IRS’ cybersecurity program.
The IRS has conducted tests of additional data elements as well as the functionality of the Affordable Care Act Compliance Validation System, the report said.
The IG also identified vulnerabilities in other areas of IRS’ IT program such as electronic authentication process controls, physical security controls, enterprise e-mail acquisition, IT contract administration controls, data retrieval and SharePoint controls.
