The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

After mass security lapse, RBS Worldpay gets IRS contract

No bad deed goes unrewarded

Regcast training : Hyper-V 3.0, VM high availability and disaster recovery

RBS Worldpay - the electronic payment processor that admitted it exposed sensitive financial records for millions of customers - has been awarded a contract by the Internal Revenue Service to process tax return payments next year.

The company, which is a division of the Royal Bank of Scotland, will begin processing taxpayers' credit card payments starting in 2010, according to Brian Krebs's Security Fix blog. In return, RBS Worldpay will take a "convenience fee" amounting to 1.95 percent of the amount a taxpayer owes.

Last month, Visa yanked RBS Worldpay from its list of processors it considers compliant with industry-mandated standards for data security. In December, the company admitted that a hacker break in exposed 1.5 million payroll and gift card holders and about 1.1 million social security records. Although the breach occurred in early November, the company waited until two days before Christmas to fess up, presumably to release the bad news when it is least likely to be noticed.

An IRS spokesman told Security Fix the company wouldn't be permitted to process taxpayers' payments until it proved it was once again compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. It will also have to pass an IRS security audit. ®

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Latest Comments

Imagine for a moment that...

all that taxpayer data got hacked. All that information out in the wild. There would then be no reason to assume that government departments were illegally sharing data or that the IRS had previously been hacked. What better way, I ask, is there to cover up data loss than let a foreign company that doesn't meet industry standard for data protection have all your data.

I LOVE a conspiracy theory.

mine's the coat with the tinfoil hat in the pocket

0
0

Hasn't this been tried before?

An ineffective government burdened by huge debts and an antiquated financial system unable to manage them, decides to subcontract out the collecting of taxes...

France 1789

0
0

RE: To me ... to you

well, that's how the banks seem to work... although I'm not sure about the proving they are capable of performing the task bit...

0
0

More from The Register

 breaking news
Number of cops abusing Police National Computer access on the rise
Only a telegram from the Queen can get you off it
 breaking news
NSA PRISM snoop-gate: Won't someone think of the children, wails Apple
10,000 things probed, mostly about missing kids, Alzheimer patients, we're told
Flash flaw potentially makes every webcam or laptop a PEEPHOLE
But it's a Google problem - Chrome only, insists Adobe
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
 breaking news
Yahoo! joins! rivals! in! PRISM! data! request! admission!
Keep calm and carry on using American tech firms, folks
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
DHS warns of vulns in hospital medical equipment
Has your doctor's anasthesia machine been hacked?
 breaking news
'BadNews is malware' says outfit that found it
Google says code harmless but Lookout says code base is evolving