The Security Summit, is comprised by tax professionals, software and industry companies, representatives from state tax groups and the Internal Revenue Service.

In its announcement, the consortium said it “has noticed that some tax professionals continue to struggle with developing a written security plan.” It said plans “should be appropriate to the company's size, scope of activities, complexity and the sensitivity of the customer data it handles. There is no one-size-fits-all WISP."

It recommended firms keep their plans in a format that others can easily read, such as PDF or Word, utilize it for employee training and store a copy offsite or in the cloud.

Tax professionals also can get help at  Publication 4557, Safeguarding Taxpayer Data, and Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The IRS Identity Theft Central pages for tax pros, individuals and businesses have important details as well while Publication 5293, Data Security Resource Guide for Tax Professionals, provides a compilation of data theft information available on IRS.gov.