Channel Brief: Dell Investigates Data Breach, IBM Lays Off Thousands

Bloomberg is reporting that a struggling Intel is in talks for two multi-billion-dollar deals -- private equity firm Apollo Global Management has offered to invest at least $5 billion and Qualcomm put forward a takeover bid.

After missing revenue expectations for its second-quarter earnings in August, the chipmaker’s stock fell 27%. The company reported revenue of $12.8 billion in the second quarter of 2024, falling short of Wall Street’s $12.9 billion estimates, according to Quartz.

The earnings miss was partly due to Intel’s decision to “more quickly ramp” its Core Ultra artificial intelligence CPUs, or core processing units, that can handle AI applications, Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger said on the company’s earnings call, Quartz said.

But Intel has made two recent deals that may point at a turnaround, Quartz reported -- the Department of Defense and Department of Commerce announced Intel had been awarded up to $3 billion in direct funding under the Chips Act, and Intel and Amazon Web Services also announced a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar collaboration to advance U.S.-based chipmaking in Ohio.

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Grab your coffee. Here's what you need to know today.

Today’s Tech, Channel and MSP News

1. Dell digs in to data breach: Dell is investigating claims of an alleged data breach after an attacker named “grep” leaked information on over 10,000 employees, Bleeping Computer reported. The threat actor offered a link to the leaked database -- which reportedly included employees' unique identifiers, full names and employment status -- for a price on a hacking forum. Dell confirmed they are looking into the situation, emphasizing that their security team is involved. Interestingly, the same hacker previously claimed responsibility for a breach involving Capgemini, indicating a pattern of targeting major corporations.

2. IBM layoffs continue: After warning of layoffs back in January, IBM has made good on that 'promise' and has laid off thousands of workers, many last week, according to The Register. "Asked to confirm the layoffs, an IBM spokesperson told The Register, 'Early this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM’s global workforce, and we still expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with.'" IBM's first-quarter 2024 earnings report included a $400 million "workforce rebalancing" charge to cover the cost of planned layoffs. The Register did the math and came up with this: "With about 288,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2023, the 'very low single-digit percentage' possibilities for 2024 might be 1 percent (2,880 layoffs), 2 percent (5,760 layoffs), 3 percent (8,640 layoffs), or more."

3. Privado hires Nishant Bhajaria to lead privacy engineering: Nishant Bhajaria, who has led privacy engineering teams at Google, Netflix, Meta, Uber, and Nike, has joined Privado to form its new Privacy Engineering Center of Excellence (CoE), the company said in a statement. As head of Privacy Engineering CoE, Nishant will advise privacy leaders and Privado customers on how to optimize privacy programs for compliance, software developer efficiency and customer trust. Privado's privacy code scanning platform helps software engineers identify and reduce privacy risks in their code, and Nishant will also advise the Privado product team on new solutions that will help bridge the gap between privacy and engineering teams. Congratulations!

4. Cloudflare launches AI Audit: Cloudflare, Inc. today announced AI Audit, a set of tools to help websites analyze and control how artificial intelligence (AI) models are using their content. Websites and content creators will now be able to quickly and easily understand how AI model providers are using their content and then control whether and how models can access it. Additionally, Cloudflare is developing a new feature through which content creators can set a reasonable price for content that is used by AI companies for model training and enhanced recall generation (RAG).

5. Rubrik launches Rubrik Cyber Recovery for Nutanix AHV: Rubrik last week announced its Rubrik Cyber Recovery capabilities are now available for Nutanix AHV. Rubrik Cyber Recovery allows Nutanix AHV users to test and validate their recovery plans in clean rooms and expedite their forensic investigations, helping to provide cyber resilience following a cyberattack.