Secure access and authorisation among areas lacking at the IRS

The Internal Revenue Service is again taking fire from the US government accountability office. In a report released last week the GAO chronicled the security shortfalls at the nation's tax collection agency.

“Despite the IRS' efforts, weaknesses in controls over key financial and tax processing systems continue to jeopardise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of financial and taxpayer information " the report said.

According to the GAO, the IRS has made some improvements but deficiencies remain. For example the report concluded that the IRS supports “strong password policies” on the database serving its authorisation system, but its procurement system does not properly restrict the maximum number of password attempts.