Poor Security : Internal Revenue Service Breach

7. Why do you want to have the incident response handled by the security incident response team and not the IT organization?

Due to policy changes, personnel changes, systems changes, and audits it is often necessary to review and revise information security policies. Information security professionals are responsible for ensuring that policies are in line with current industry standards.

Normally the Internal Revenue Service conducts audits to a significant percentage of taxpaying citizens each year, this audits are perform to verify certain variances within the tax law and codes. The individual being audited does have a burden on

Tax Returns- The various amounts of tax returns, such as Form 706 and Form W-2, are used to determine income tax. Returns will be compared with financial records to determine if the law is being followed.

In recent years, the world has seen significant changes in technology. With new technology come new challenges. One of those new challenges is identity theft. Identity theft can happen through the internet, ATM, emails, or even a phone. Identity theft can happen when any person(s) takes an individual’s information, such as their Social Security number, or even banking information for financial gain. “Close to 100 million Americans have their personal information placed at risk of theft each year when records in databases are lost, stolen or accessed by unauthorized individuals” (Information systems and technology, n.d.). Identity theft not only costs the person, whose

They may be able to access their W-2 form, 1099 transcript, 1040 form or 1065 form.

Issa utilizes statistics to suggest ideas. He says, “The Office of Personnel Management’s security breach resulted in the theft of 22 million Americans’ information, including fingerprints, Social

On December 18, 2013, one of the security bloggers, Brian Krebs, posted in his blog that Target, one of the biggest US retailers, had suffered a massive data breach. The next day, Target announced that data from more than 40 million credit and debit card accounts had been stolen from its systems, and noting that they started a thorough investigation. Perhaps learning from Target’s mistakes, other organizations could achieve a goal of better protecting themselves and their customers’ information.

To understand the role(s) of a Security Manager, a person must know what security is and what it means to an organization. According to Ortmeier, “security may be defined as a public or private service-related activity that provides personnel, equipment, and creates policies and procedures designed to prevent or reduce losses. These losses, caused by criminal action as well as by noncriminal events resulting from human error, emergencies, man-made and natural disasters, and business intelligence collection by competitors”. (2009).

One of the largest issues with this data breach is, just six months prior, Target had installed “a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye (FEYE), whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon” (Riley, Elgin, Lawrence, & Matlack, 2014). The problem was not the software, it was a lack of reaction by Target’s security team located in Minneapolis. Once the credit card and personal information was stored, the hackers moved the information to various locations throughout the U.S. before sending the data to their computers in Russia. On December 12, 2013, Federal investigators notified Target of a massive data breach; and on December 15, 2013, Target confirmed and eradicated the malware, after all of the credit card and personal information had been stolen.

Those on the Left, including the Clintons and Obama, have been accused of using the IRS as their personal “Gestapo”, attacking individuals and groups that are opposed to their agenda.

The Target data breach remains one of the most notable breaches in history, it was the first time a CEO of a major corporation was fired due to a security event. The breach received an enormous amount of attention, it caused corporations and individuals to change the way they think about information security and data protection. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2013 hackers gained access to 40 million customer credit cards and personal data of 70 million Target customers. The intruders slipped in by using stolen credentials and from there gained access to vulnerable servers on Targets network to launch their attack and steal sensitive customer data from the POS cash registers. All this occurred without a response from Targets security operations center, even though security systems notified them of suspicious activity. The data was then sold on the black market for an estimated $53 million dollars. However, the cost to Target, creditors, and banks exceeded half of a billion dollars. This report will review how the infiltration occurred, what allowed the breach to occur including Targets response, and finally who was impacted by the security event.

The risks that face an organization are going to always be present. However, an incident response plan outlines procedures for handling security incidents that occur within the organization and for correcting and documenting the security issue in a timely manner. The incident response team is trained to effectively implement the incident response plan. By containing an attack, and limiting the amount of time that an attack is allowed to continue, further risks to the organization can be mitigated.

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The information security incident management policy of Blyth’s Books was created in 2010 and has been reviewed four times in five years. Those covered by its scope are clearly stated. It stresses the importance of incident management to the organisation and has the support of upper level management.