The IRS Had a Contract With an Email Backup Company

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it can't provide emails sent between 2009 and 2011 that were requested by congressional investigators because of hard drive crashes.

The agency said that emails stored on dead drives were lost forever because its email backup tapes were recycled every six months, and employees were responsible for keeping their own long-term archives.

The IRS had a contract with email backup service vendor Sonasoft starting in 2005, according to FedSpending.org, which lists the contract as being for "automatic data processing services." Sonasoft's motto is "email archiving done right," and the company lists the IRS as a customer.

In 2009, Sonasoft even sent out a Tweet advertising its work for the IRS.

The IRS Had a Contract With an Email Backup Company

All it boils down to is mass corruption that they're not even going to bother trying to hide.
"Oops; lost the emails; destroyed the hard drives. Don't buy that story? Tough. Not even going to try for a better story."
I get the feeling that those in power WANT us to know how corrupt they are, are more importantly that there is not a dang thing the people can do about it.

a reply to: LrdRedhawk

Great ad for the company! Bet they wish they'd never done that one.

Use our server and be sure to have all your emails trashed every 6 months! We even guarantee to totally destroy all your backed up files so they are unreadable 2 times a year!

The IRS will never want any of your documents that are over 6 months old if you use our company, we guarantee it!

The CEO is probably petrified of the NSA and IRS threats to keep this info quiet and to destroy everything - or else! That's the Chicago mob way after all.

Another corporation feeding of the federal government while doing a poor job.

I wish the people had the ability to request investigations and audits in the name of National Security. Most three letter agencies are exactly that, a threat to OUR security, privacy and liberty.

I'm
Really
Sorry...

Your beat.

a reply to: LrdRedhawk

Great Find !!

Here's some actual proof that the IRS is lying....

Synopsis:
Added: Sep 12, 2008 1:01 pm
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to award a sole source purchase order to Sonasoft Corporation, for the purchase of the software licenses related to Exchange Disaster Recovery capabilities. These items and services have been determined to meet the definition of commercial items in accordance with Part 2.101 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.


The IRS has a need for the following items:



Sonasoft Software Licenses and Software Maintenance Support - Solicitation Number: Y8Y184TSA62-000

Sonasoft Recent Awards

Total Value of Purchase Orders
$82,350.42

Largest Government Customers:

Department of Treasury: Internal Revenue Service




Government Contracts

All Together Now....

originally posted by: grandmakdw
a reply to: LrdRedhawk

Great ad for the company! Bet they wish they'd never done that one.

Use our server and be sure to have all your emails trashed every 6 months! We even guarantee to totally destroy all your backed up files so they are unreadable 2 times a year!

The IRS will never want any of your documents that are over 6 months old if you use our company, we guarantee it!

The CEO is probably petrified of the NSA and IRS threats to keep this info quiet and to destroy everything - or else! That's the Chicago mob way after all.

Yup, and they can't even get that tweet right...Severs Eh!

The agency said that emails stored on dead drives were lost forever because its email backup tapes were recycled every six months,

Nobody uses tape anymore.

It is akin to the floppy disk.

Lies,lies,and damn lies.

How much more proof do people need ?

a reply to: LrdRedhawk

Here's their facebook page, lets ask them a few questions regarding their contract with the IRS.

www.facebook.com...

I'm not on twitter so can't get to them that way but they won't want to lose credibility over this.

a reply to: xuenchen

In addition to your post:

Sonasoft Software Licenses and Software Maintenance Support

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to award a sole source purchase order to Sonasoft Corporation, for the purchase of the software licenses related to Exchange Disaster Recovery capabilities. These items and services have been determined to meet the definition of commercial items in accordance with Part 2.101 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery for Exchange Servers Through a Mailbox Replication Approach - PDF

The IRS requires the purchase of the above mentioned Sonasoft software since it will expand the IRS-Office of Chief Counsel’s (OCC) Exchange Disaster Recovery capabilities beyond the incumbent servers. The software initiates the real time replication of mail box changes and commences the backup of mailboxes via existing IRS servers. In addition, the software package includes the ability to rapidly switch to a disaster recovery site from a remote location. The software platform allows the OCC to recover customer e-mail in the event of a catastrophic Exchange server failure. Sonasoft Corporation has customized their commercial off the shelf software to operate within the OCC. Sonasoft is the sole proprietor of the software and software maintenance

Lets mobilise people, it's the weekend so it's unlikely anyone from Sonasoft are going to be monitoring their facebook or twitter feeds.

If we can get this to go viral then we maybe able to shame the truth out of the company.

I've already posted the article to their facebook page and it hasn't been taken down yet. This is exactly what we at ATS are good for, lets move people.

a reply to: smurfy

From the SonaSoft page:

SonaVault uses stub technology without any client side component (plugin) installation to reduce the size of the Microsoft Exchange Server. In this process, message contents including attachments are removed from the email and a pointer namely stub is created in the email body which has a small footprint compared to the actual message size. This is transparent to the end-user who access emails through Outlook in the usual fashion. Stubbed emails when replied or forwarded, retrieve contents from the SonaVault Store instead of the Microsoft Exchange Server, seamlessly to the end-user.

www.sonasoft.com...

The software technology also implement auditing or "trusted" operations, which means that any edit, deletion, modification, reading, writing is logged and archived by the person, date and machine.

www.pcquest.com...

A key use of an email archival system is for pulling out email when there's a litigation. So a company could have multiple cases running against it. In that case, the emails pertaining to individual cases can be assigned to specific people and be locked. This way, these emails will not expire.

The question is ... what exactly is the SonaVault Store? Digging a little further

www.redorbit.com...

Sonasoft re-launches its latest appliance as SonaVault Email Archiving Appliance powered by Rorke Global Solutions and Microsoft Technology. ...

SonaVault Email Archiving Appliance powered by Rorke Global Solutions (RGS) and Microsoft Technology is an Intel Xeon Processor server that uses quality, nonproprietary hardware that can easily be expanded. A RAID 5 SAS controller protects the archived data and comes standard with all SonaVault Email Archiving Appliances powered by Rorke Global Solutions (RGS) and Microsoft Technology.


So essentially, the archived emails aren't on the users PC, aren't in the exchange server, aren't on backup tapes, but are in fact duplicated on five or more hard disk drives in a dedicated rack-mounted box that looks like this:



The whole email system was designed to prevent E-mails from being lost or tampered with in such a legal situation as this.

originally posted by: mclarenmp4
a reply to: LrdRedhawk

Here's their facebook page, lets ask them a few questions regarding their contract with the IRS.

www.facebook.com...

I'm not on twitter so can't get to them that way but they won't want to lose credibility over this.

Good idea. I just posted this on the FB page:

How much for Lois Lerner's lost emails? This could be your best advertising ever. Think of the publicity you won't have to pay for. A New York ad firms wet dream. Plus, you would be a National Hero!

Des

a reply to: Destinyone

Excellent.

I posted "Seems like your backup solutions don't keep American IRS data very secure does it?"

I know poor grammar but I was in a hurry to see if it would post.

a reply to: mclarenmp4

Mine posted...I'll go like what you posted. I may share their pg too, with a note they did the backup emails for the IRS, invite people to go say hi to them...

Des

Was it for the entire IRS or just a single entity within the IRS?

I saw in one of these replies the figure of $8k. That seems pretty low for such a large government organization.

If I buy something for my office using my purchase card the company can say, 'Our product helps this company!' Even though it's really just helping my office and isn't a company-wide purchase.

Whatever though, keep digging and grasping at all the straws you find.

a reply to: links234

They ate the whole thang.

The IRS requires the purchase of the above mentioned Sonasoft software since it will expand the IRS-Office of Chief Counsel’s (OCC) Exchange Disaster Recovery capabilities beyond the incumbent servers. The software initiates the real time replication of mail box changes and commences the backup of mailboxes via existing IRS servers. In addition, the software package includes the ability to rapidly switch to a disaster recovery site from a remote location. The software platform allows the OCC to recover customer e-mail in the event of a catastrophic Exchange server failure. Sonasoft Corporation has customized their commercial off the shelf software to operate within the OCC. Sonasoft is the sole proprietor of the software and software maintenance.

Busted Disgusted and Can't be Trusted !!

a reply to: LrdRedhawk

OK now I'm not paranoid in the slightest but this is weird. Your OP link is now 404'd and while I was posting earlier in this thread, for the 1st time ever my laptop screen went completely blank and I had to sleep my computer to get it back on.

I have had my laptop for 3 years and that has never happened. Weird.

originally posted by: mclarenmp4
a reply to: LrdRedhawk

OK now I'm not paranoid in the slightest but this is weird. Your OP link is now 404'd and while I was posting earlier in this thread, for the 1st time ever my laptop screen went completely blank and I had to sleep my computer to get it back on.

I have had my laptop for 3 years and that has never happened. Weird.

Yup it's 404'd !!!!!!!

I think somebody is a watching !!!!!

Another one "Pleading the 5th"

a reply to: xuenchen

WOOT...that means they have all the good stuff...LOL

Des