5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

For the week ending June 28, CRN looks at IT companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions.

The Week Ending June 28

Topping this week's roundup of those having a rough week are a number of leading solution providers, including NTT Data, Dimension Data and Tata Consulting, which were targets of state-sponsored hackers.

Also making the "Rough Week" list is Apple for losing chief product designer Jony Ive, who played a key role in designing some of Apple's most successful products. Data management software vendor Attunity made the list after customer data was exposed on an incorrectly configured AWS S3 server, while the town of Lake City, Fla., was on the list after it paid hackers $460,000 in ransomware. And Facebook had a bad week because it lost a court bid to dismiss a lawsuit stemming from last year's security breach of nearly 30 million user accounts.

Not everyone in the IT industry was having a rough go of it this week. For a rundown of companies that made smart decisions, executed savvy strategic moves—or just had good luck—check out this week's 5 Companies That Came To Win roundup.

Global Solution Providers Reportedly Hit By Chinese Hackers

Several of the industry's largest solution providers reportedly were targeted by state-sponsored Chinese hackers who broke into the companies' IT systems to scavenge for intellectual property and corporate secrets.

NTT Data, NTT Data subsidiary Dimension Data, Tata Consulting, Fujitsu and DXC Technology were all named this week as victims of the attacks in a Reuters report.

The companies' IT systems, data and customers were reportedly compromised by the CloudHopper attacks between 2014 and 2017.

Apple Losing Design Legend Jony Ive

Jony Ive, a central figure in the design of the Apple iPhone and other breakthrough devices, is leaving the company, it was learned this week. Ive plans to start his own design firm and Apple will be a client.

Ive, Apple's chief design officer, has headed Apple's product design team since 1996 and was a close collaborator with Steve Jobs after Jobs returned to Apple in 1997.

The launch of the game-changing iMac desktop in 1998 was an early success of the Jobs-Ive collaboration. But it was Ive's leadership in designing the iPod music player and the industry-transforming iPhone where he is seen as having made his biggest impact.

AWS Storage Leak Exposes Netflix, TD Bank And Ford Data Managed By Attunity

It's been a rough week for data management company Attunity after it was disclosed that three AWS S3 buckets owned by the company exposed data from some of its largest corporate customers including Netflix, Ford Motor Co. and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Attunity didn't properly configure the S3 storage, leaving the data visible in plain text, according to reports on Bloomberg and Threatpost. The error was discovered May 13 and the data was secured three days later.

The incident left open to public view such data as email correspondence, employee personal data, sales and marketing contact information, system logins and passwords, and even information about new product designs and project plans.

Attunity, which was acquired by business intelligence software developer Qlik earlier this year, provides database replication software and services that businesses use to copy data for such tasks as business analytics and disaster recovery. Reports said some of Attunity's own data was exposed in the incident.

Facebook Loses Round In Data Breach Lawsuit

A federal judge has denied Facebook's move to dismiss a lawsuit stemming from a data breach that affected nearly 30 million users last year.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsop ruled that the lawsuit could proceed and that discovery should move "with alacrity" for a trial, according to a Bloomberg report.

The security breach, considered Facebook's biggest, occurred when attackers exploited bugs in Facebook software to gain login access to user accounts, including user names and contact information. The class-action lawsuit charges the social media giant with negligence and failing to secure users' data as promised, Bloomberg said.

Facebook has defended itself by saying it isn't liable for the sophisticated cyberattack. But Alsop rejected that argument and ruled that the lawsuit can move forward.

Florida City Pays $460,000 In Ransomware To Regain Control Of Its IT System

Lake City, Fla., paid hackers about $460,000 in ransomware this week after the attackers disabled the town's computer systems. It was the second such ransomware incident in Florida in two weeks.

Lake City, located in the northern part of the state, agreed to pay 42 Bitcoin—about $460,000—to regain control of servers that ran the municipality's email, an online utility payment system, phones and other IT. The servers were taken over by the hackers two weeks earlier, according to reports from The New York Times and CBS News.

Last week the city council in Riviera Beach, Fla., a town in Palm Beach County, agreed to pay $600,000 in ransom, also in Bitcoin, to hackers who took over that municipality's computer system, according to the reports.