The Internal Revenue Service has its issues. Nobody will deny that.
After Equifax announced one of the largest security breaches ever, the IRS announced in September that it signed a $7.25 million contract with Equifax. That contract was supposedly a no-bid contract and Equifax was to provide the IRS with taxpayer and personal identify verification services. The contract stated that Equifax was the only company capable of providing these services to the IRS and it was deemed a “critical” service that could not lapse.
The IRS recently announced that it has suspended that contract after members of Congress complained the tax agency had awarded a no-bid contract to a company that recently had a massive data beach. Not just one security breach, but it is now being reported that Equifax had at least two security breaches. It has also been disclosed that Equifax has provided these security services in the past to the IRS.
During the suspension period, an IRS spokesperson stated that the IRS will continue its review of Equifax systems and security. Think about these series of events. The IRS, which has been hacked on numerous occasions despite having engaged Equifax in the past, awarded a no-bid contract to Equifax because it was “the only company capable of providing these services”. Now that it has been revealed that Equifax has its own security issues, the IRS will be reviewing the Equifax security measures. Only in the eyes of a federal bureaucrat would these events make any sense. So the government agency that could not secure its own computer systems from hackers engages Equifax, the only company capable of assisting the IRS and which can’t secure its own systems, and now the IRS is going to monitor Equifax to ensure that its systems are secure.
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