An Internal Revenue Service system designed to detect hacking on the agency's modernized systems isn't working as it should, according to an audit report released this month by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's inspector general for tax administration.

And that problem calls into question all of the IRS's modernization plans, the report said.

According to the report, the IRS's Security Audit and Analysis System (SAAS) is supposed to collect the information needed to detect improper activity and to reconstruct events for potential criminal investigations. SAAS is then supposed to store the information in a central database so authorized users can generate reports to determine whether IRS financial data has been compromised.

By Linda Rosencrance at Computerworld.

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