From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Tue Apr 07 2009 - 03:25:33 CDT

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http://fcw.com/articles/2009/04/06/web-irs-security-settings.aspx

By Mary Mosquera
FCW.com
April 06, 2009

The Internal Revenue Service has been slow to implement the required
security settings on its 98,000 desktop and laptop computers, the
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said. The IRS
implemented 102 of the 254 required security settings on its computers
in October 2008, nine months after the deadline set by the Office of
Management and Budget, TIGTA said in a report released today.

OMB required agencies that use Microsoft’s Windows XP or VISTA operating
systems to adopt the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC), a
standard set of configuration settings, by Feb. 1, 2008, to improve
security and reduce operating costs. As of December 2008, the IRS had
implemented 81 percent of the settings, the auditor said.

The service has faced difficulties in establishing the security settings
because the tax agency’s 98,000 computers are in 670 locations, and the
IRS operates 1,900 software applications, 300 of which were internally
developed for specific IRS business processes, the report states. As
part of the implementation effort, the IRS must test each application to
ensure it operates properly with the FDCC settings, TIGTA said.

The creation of a project team to manage the security effort in January
2008, one week before the deadline, slowed implementation of the
settings, TIGTA said. The untimely creation of the project team occurred
because some IRS officials mistakenly assumed the IRS’ current common
operating environment met the FDCC requirements, according to the
report.

[...]

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