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Security report for irs.gov

Internal Revenue Service · Government · United States

Low risk. 3 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

76/100

Risk levelLow

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website serves as the official digital platform for the U.S. federal tax authority, providing comprehensive resources for tax filing, payment, refunds, and taxpayer assistance. It targets a broad audience including individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and tax professionals. The site is well-branded, consistent, and offers extensive content relevant to its mission. Technically, the site is built on Drupal 10, leveraging modern web technologies and standard analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. The website demonstrates good mobile optimization, accessibility, and SEO practices, although performance is moderate likely due to the complexity and volume of content. From a security perspective, the site enforces HTTPS and employs secure form practices. However, explicit security headers are not evident in the HTML content, and no vulnerability disclosure or incident response contacts are published. The WHOIS data is minimal, typical for .gov domains, but this limits domain registration transparency. Overall, the IRS website is a high-quality, trustworthy government resource with strong business credibility and content quality. Strategic improvements include enhancing privacy compliance with cookie consent mechanisms, publishing security policies and incident response contacts, and implementing additional security headers to strengthen the security posture.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
58/ 100 · Medium
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

3 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…

  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • High

      No Cookie Policy found

      GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

      What to do: Add a dedicated cookie policy explaining cookie usage and purposes

    • High

      No Cookie Consent Banner found

      GDPR requires explicit consent for non-essential cookies

      What to do: Implement a cookie consent banner that appears on first visit

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching irs.gov

This scan found 18 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

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  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

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Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
95
Security headers
55
Email security
70
DNS health
80
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
58
Average
76

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

The IRS holds a dominant position as the primary federal tax collection agency in the United States, operating under the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Its business model is government-funded, focusing on tax administration and compliance enforcement. The website supports multiple user segments including individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and international filers, offering tools such as refund tracking, tax withholding estimators, and free filing options. The IRS maintains partnerships with related government entities and provides extensive educational and compliance resources. Growth indicators include digital service enhancements and expanded online tools. The partnership ecosystem includes treasury.gov and other federal government portals, reinforcing its authoritative role.

Security posture

The IRS website exhibits a mature security posture with mandatory HTTPS usage and secure form handling. The absence of visible security headers such as Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options suggests room for improvement. No exposed sensitive data or vulnerable libraries were detected in the HTML content. The lack of published incident response contacts and vulnerability disclosure policies indicates potential compliance gaps. Data protection practices appear standard for a government site, but cookie consent mechanisms are missing, which may affect privacy compliance. Overall, the site is secure but could benefit from enhanced transparency and additional security controls.

Recommendations

  1. Implement and publish a comprehensive cookie consent mechanism to improve privacy compliance.
  2. Add security headers including Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-XSS-Protection to enhance protection against common web attacks.
  3. Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.
  4. Provide clear incident response contact information to improve transparency and readiness.
  5. Regularly audit and update third-party scripts and analytics tools to minimize security risks.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
Internal Revenue Service
Description
Pay your taxes. Get your refund status. Find IRS forms and answers to tax questions. We help you understand and meet your federal tax responsibilities.
Key services
Tax filing information, Refund status tracking, Tax payment processing, Forms and instructions, Identity protection PIN issuance, Taxpayer assistance and education
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal 10, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, AddToAny sharing, jQuery
Frameworks
Drupal
Performance
moderate
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
excellent
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Secure forms with autocomplete off
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Use of official .gov domain

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Marketing tools
AddToAny
Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
excellent
User experience
excellent
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
excellent
Professionalism
excellent
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Official U.S. government website with comprehensive tax-related content
  2. No signs of blocking or WAF challenges
  3. Strong branding and trust indicators
  4. Use of modern CMS (Drupal 10) and standard analytics tools
  5. No explicit contact emails or phone numbers found in HTML content
  6. No cookie consent mechanism detected
  7. WHOIS data is minimal and lacks registrar and creation info, typical for .gov domains
Technical notes

Notes

The IRS website is built on Drupal 10, a modern and widely supported CMS, ensuring a robust content management framework. The use of Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics indicates standard analytics integration. The site is mobile-optimized with responsive design and accessibility features, supporting a wide range of users. Hosting appears to leverage Akamai CDN services, enhancing performance and availability. While the site performs moderately, opportunities exist to optimize loading times and reduce technical debt. The absence of some security headers and cookie consent mechanisms suggests areas for technical enhancement to meet evolving compliance and security standards.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 76/100Low26 findingsView report
  2. 76/100Low26 findingsView report
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