Information Security: Computer Controls over Key Treasury Internet Payment System

摘要

Pay.gov is an Internet portal sponsored and managed by the Department of the Treasurys Financial Management Service (FMS) and operated at three Federal Reserve facilities. Pay.gov is intended to allow the public to make certain non-incometax payments to the federal government securely over the Internet. FMS estimates that Pay.gov eventually could annually process 80 million transactions valued at $125 billion annually. Because of the magnitude of transaction volume and dollar value envisioned for Pay.gov, GAO was asked to determine whether FMS (1) conducted a comprehensive security risk assessment and (2) implemented and documented appropriate security measures and controls for the systems protection. GAO recommends that the Commissioner of FMS direct the Pay.gov program manager to implement a number of actions to strengthen security over Pay.gov. The FMS Commissioner concurred with our recommendations and stated that FMS had taken action to correct almost all of the weaknesses that GAO identified and has plans to correct the remaining weaknesses.