GoSystem Tax Components

GoSystem Tax has six primary components:

Client: This software operates on each individual workstation. The client’s footprint requires less than 100 MB of disk storage. You download the client software to the workstation using the Internet or a private connection, after an approved licensing agreement is obtained.
Firewall: This allows network traffic only to specific systems, and only allows specific applications to be run with appropriate security.
Application Servers: These servers manage each session with the client workstation and perform tax computations at an enhanced rate.
Web Servers: These servers provide the interface to the tax applications and other components, such as GoSystem Tax Help.
Database Servers: These servers maintain all the non-tax data and information for scheduling, processing capabilities, and usage.
Database Server Warehouses: These servers, located in our Data Center, store taxpayer data for data mining by your approved users.

Security

GoSystem Tax has state-of-the-art security features for risk-free tax filing.

Our application is protected by strong password policies and other protections against the ever-changing cyber threatscape. We also provide in-built protection mechanisms against inappropriate privileges of various users of the product.

The application is thoroughly penetration-tested against any vulnerability before market release.

Product Assurance

Security is integral in the development of our products. Projects follow a security review process as part of our overall governance function. This process includes but is not limited to technical reviews, security checklists, and formal sign-offs. The security team defines standards and provides secure architectural patterns to support the creation of secure products.

We have developed a comprehensive security testing capability, including static and dynamic application analysis and third-party penetration testing.

Application Security

Application Security includes multiple measures to prevent unauthorized access. Access to the application requires valid user login IDs, firm and location access authorizations, and passwords. Additionally, data stored in the Data Center is accessible only from the Application server; communication directly to the data on these servers is not permitted.

Thomson Reuters brings in a wide range of products ranging from desktop applications to state-of-art hosted/cloud applications on the managed service portfolio. A robust secure software development life cycle (SDLC) is adopted that spans across all the stages of the product development.

Our SDLC incorporates state-of-the-art techniques and industry best practices such as threat modeling, fine-combing the software with code reviews that are cross-checked against the OWASP checklist, and developing a thorough analysis through the test cases of the integrated code along with architectural reviews with dedicated security experts.

Our applications are classified based on the risk assessment and are required to go through penetration testing with external/independent vendors in compliance with our ISO 27K framework. Any vulnerability found during this penetration testing is addressed accordingly with maintenance releases/schedules.

Thomson Reuters dedicates substantial resources to the application development teams on various security aspects including training on the Application Assurance (AA). This ensures that the information security becomes an integral part of our product development rather than an “add-on” aspect.

Cryptography

GoSystem Tax uses SSL encryption. When a user opens a tax return, all data, including tax return data, passed between the client workstation and the application servers using the Internet (or private connection) is encrypted using SSL. Data is also encrypted at rest.

We mandate several industry standards-based cryptographic methods in our applications. The SHA2 hash algorithms are deployed with at least 256-bit length in accordance to NIST SP800-107 standard. Symmetric encryption is currently based on AES 256 that follows the FIPS (federal Information Process Standards) 197, while the asymmetric encryption algorithms such as RSA 128/256 bits block-cipher keys along with 2048/4096 bits private/public keys are deployed in our systems in accordance to FIPS 186-3 standards. Secure communication channels have TLS 1.2/1.1 protocols enabled to ensure data integrity and confidentiality across the end points and prevention of eavesdropping of the sensitive data handled by our applications.

Service Levels

Our environments are built with full redundancy to provide high availability and eliminate single points of failure. Due to this redundancy, Thomson Reuters aims to maintain an Application Availability performance standard of >=99.5% of available hours (total hours in a month minus any planned downtime hours).

Thomson Reuters continually backs up your data and stores it in our data center and at off-site locations, in the event that disaster recovery is required. For additional data recovery protection, an alternate off-site data center hosting replicated tax data is an available option.

Checkpoint

Combine GoSystem Tax with the Checkpoint research products for the most powerful and comprehensive tax compliance and expertise systems available.

e-Form RS

Purchase the e-Form RS product to put over 11,000 electronic forms at your tax department’s fingertips.

RS Resources/components.htm/TY2021

Last Modified: 06/30/2020

Last System Build: 09/25/2022