FTI Security Guidelines Report

The most recent version of IRS Publication 1075 – Tax Information Security Guidelines for Federal, State, and Local Agencies took effect on January 1, 2014, and provides thorough guidance for organizations that deal with Federal Taxpayer Information (FTI). Not only does Publication 1075 outline the technical and physical security requirements, but it also details incident response and data disclosure requirements. According to Publication 1075, the FTI guidelines not only apply to the organization receiving FTI; they also apply to contractors or consolidated data centers that may come into contact with the FTI as well. This means that organizations need to take a comprehensive approach to securing this sensitive information.

This report focuses on IRS Publication 1075. Tenable’s Tenable.sc Continuous View (CV) is the market-defining continuous network monitoring platform, which includes active vulnerability detection with Nessus, passive vulnerability detection with the Nessus Network Monitor (NNM), and log correlation with the Log Correlation Engine (LCE). Tenable.sc CV assists organizations in discovering compliance and vulnerability concerns on the network, assessing their impact, reporting on the results, and taking action to remediate issues. Tenable.sc CV provides the tools that state and local government agencies can use to meet and demonstrate FTI compliance.

IRS Publication 1075 is largely based on the standard NIST Special Publication 800-53, but with special considerations for additional sensitive information. Tenable Network Security has extensive expertise in helping customers meet the requirements of NIST Special Publication 800-53, and as a result, the Tenable.sc CV solution is well suited for meeting IRS Publication 1075 requirements as well.

The report is available in the Tenable.sc Feed, a comprehensive collection of dashboards, reports, assurance report cards and assets. The report can be easily located in the Tenable.sc Feed under the category Compliance & Configuration Assessment. The report requirements are:

• Tenable.sc 5.0.1
• Nessus 8.5.1
• LCE 6.0.0
• NNM 5.9.0

For the related Tenable.sc dashboard, see the FTI Security Guidelines dashboard.

Download the Analysis and Compliance to Meet CJIS and FTI Security Standards whitepaper.

The following chapters are included in the report:

• Executive Summary - This chapter provides a series of charts depicting a summary of the rates of compliance and discovered vulnerabilities based on the FTI security guidelines outlined in IRS Publication 1075. These charts provide two views, one showing the current breakdown of relevant vulnerabilities by severity, and the other showing the trend of these vulnerabilities over the past 3 months.
• Identify and Prioritize IT Risks - This chapter presents information about the vulnerability of the environment, including the top exploitable vulnerabilities and the top most vulnerable hosts found in the environment. Also presented are the top remediation opportunities.
• Track Mitigation Progress - This chapter presents information that can assist in tracking vulnerability mitigations in the environment.
• Detect Activity - This chapter presents information that can assist in monitoring the network, including alerts for detected changes, suspicious activity, and potential data leakage.
• Monitor Compliance - This chapter provides a sense of how the network complies with the security guidelines in IRS Publication 1075, by measuring compliance with the equivalent NIST 800-53 controls.