IRS Commissioner: ‘More Than 1 Million Malicious Attempts’ to Access IRS Computers Daily

CNS NEWS reports that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that the Internal Revenue Service’s computers “withstand more than 1 million malicious attempts to access them each day.”

“We work continuously to protect our main computer systems from cyber attacks and to safeguard taxpayer information stored in our databases. These systems withstand more than 1 million malicious attempts to access them each day,” Koskinen said in his opening statement.

Koskinen said the IRS has made “steady progress in protecting against fraudulent refund claims and criminally prosecuting those who engage in this crime,” but he said the type of criminal it deals with has changed.

“The problem used to be random individuals filing a few dozen or a few hundred false tax returns at a time. Now we’re dealing more and more with organized crime syndicates here and in other countries,” he said.

“They are gathering, as the chairman noted, almost unimaginable amounts of personal data from sources outside the IRS so they can do a better job of impersonating taxpayers, evading our return-processing filters and obtaining fraudulent refunds,” Koskinen added.

To combat this “complex and evolving threat,” the IRS joined with leaders of the electronic tax industry, the software industry, and the states to create the Security Summit Group” in March 2015, Koskinen said. Read more at CNS NEWS.

{Matzav.com}