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HP Layoffs, Wall Street Blues, Palin's Hack

The week got off to a rough start with the collapse of Lehman Brothers sending shudders through global financial markets and raising questions about whether there will be a ripple effect on the IT industry. After the market closed Monday, Hewlett-Packard added to the dismal mood by announcing it will lay off 24,600 employees as it integrates Electronic Data Systems into the HP fold. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was the victim of an apparent hacking attack on the Yahoo account she uses for official business as governor of Alaska, and in other government-related IT news, a GAO report says the U.S. does a lousy job of following its regulations regarding electronic-waste shipment and disposal.

By Nancy Weil

September 19, 2008 — IDG News Service —

The week got off to a rough start with the collapse of Lehman Brothers sending shudders through global financial markets and raising questions about whether there will be a ripple effect on the IT industry. After the market closed Monday, Hewlett-Packard added to the dismal mood by announcing it will lay off 24,600 employees as it integrates Electronic Data Systems into the HP fold. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was the victim of an apparent hacking attack on the Yahoo account she uses for official business as governor of Alaska, and in other government-related IT news, a GAO report says the U.S. does a lousy job of following its regulations regarding electronic-waste shipment and disposal.

1. Update: HP announces 24,600 layoffs in wake of EDS acquisition: Hewlett-Packard added to a bad-news Monday after the plunging stock market closed, announcing it would lay off 24,600 employees as it works to integrate its US$13.9 billion acquisition of Electronic Data Systems into the company. Layoffs had been expected, but the size of them came as a surprise.

2. Wall Street turmoil unlikely to KO IT industry and Financial crisis signals end of an era in Wall Street IT world: The ongoing U.S. financial system crisis will not have a dramatic effect on IT spending among financial institutions, according to some IT analysts, while others feel certain that IT spending in the securities segment of the industry will be forever altered, partly because struggling firms will be acquisition targets whose tech assets will be absorbed as part of purchase deals.

3. Web proxy firm working with FBI to trace Palin e-mail hacker and Security researchers ponder possible Palin attacks: The webmaster of a proxy service that might have been used in the illegal hack of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is probing the hack. Screenshots of Palin's e-mail were posted at various Web sites, including the Wikileaks.org site. While the FBI and the Secret Service investigate, security researchers are debating how the hack might have been carried out -- one claim circulating the Internet is that a simple password-reset request was at the heart of the hack. Some researchers are dubious it was that simple; others say it might well have been.

4. Audit: US exporting harmful e-waste to other countries: The U.S. ships toxic electronic waste to other countries that lack regulations or enforcement mechanisms to protect people and the environments of the nations used as dumping grounds, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a disturbing report. The market for e-waste in other countries is "thriving," the report concluded. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn't done much to enforce a January 2007 regulation that requires notification from companies that they are shipping discarded monitors containing cathode ray tubes, it also found.

 

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