What the Census Bureau Can Learn From the IRS About Detecting Cyberattacks – By Mariam Baksh (Nextgov) / Nov 28, 2022
Inspectors general from Commerce and Treasury present a tale of two testing regimes.
In separate reports, agency watchdogs demonstrated the difference proper implementation of detection controls can make in limiting the impact of attempted cyber intrusions: one, a foiled ransomware attack against the Internal Revenue Service; the other, an internal penetration test of the Census Bureau’s resilience.
IRS personnel told the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA, that their centralized information security hub responded to—and neutralized—a ransomware attack it detected in May, according to a Nov. 23 report.
The TIGTA report credited the successful detection and response to testing procedures that the IRS incorporated into its policies under guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
