5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Ending Sept. 21

Topping this week's roundup of those having a rough week is IBM, which was hit with a class-action lawsuit charging that the company discriminated against older workers in recent rounds of layoffs.

Also making the list this week are Apple, which paid Ireland more than $14 billion as it battles the European Commission in a tax dispute, the U.S. State Department for an email security breach, Microsoft for having to deal with a zero-day vulnerability in its JET Database Engine, and Amazon for having its Twitch game-streaming service blocked in China.

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 Five Companies That Came To Win roundup.

IBM Hit With Lawsuit Charging Age Discrimination In Layoffs

IBM found itself on the wrong end of a lawsuit, filed this week, that charges the company with discrimination against older workers by disproportionately firing them in recent layoffs.

The class-action lawsuit, filed by three former employees, charges that over the last several years "IBM has been in the process of systematically laying off older employees in order to build a younger workforce," according to a Bloomberg report.

The lawsuit relies heavily on information in a ProPublica report published in March that said IBM had fired more than 20,000 employees older than 40 in the last six years, Bloomberg said.

IBM has denied the claims, saying the layoffs were more about the need for updated skills, not age-related, according to a USA Today story.

The suit was filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of the employees by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, who has represented workers in lawsuits against Amazon, Uber and Google, according to Bloomberg.

State Department's Unclassified Email System Hit By Security Breach

A security breach of the U.S. State Department's unclassified email system may have exposed employees' personal data.

The incident was reported by the news site Politico this week after it obtained a Sept. 7 alert sent to the agency's employees. The alert described the incident as "activity of concern" that affected "less than 1% of employee inboxes."

The alert said that personally identifiable information for the employees may have been exposed and those employees had been notified. This week the agency publicly confirmed the security breach.

The agency is still investigating the incident and it's not clear when it occurred or for how long the email data was exposed.

Apple Pays $15.4 Billion To Ireland In EU Tax Dispute

Apple this week finished coughing up 14.3 billion Euros ($15.4 billion) to pay back taxes and interest to Ireland in a dispute with the European Commission over whether the device maker received unfair tax benefits.

Apple and Ireland have appealed the EC decision and the tax money will be held in escrow until the dispute is settled. The appeal process could take years.

In August the EC ruled that Apple had received unfair tax incentives from the Ireland government, essentially allowing Apple to use Ireland as a tax shelter. Both Apple and Ireland have said Apple's tax treatment were in line with Irish and European Union law, according to a story in The Guardian.

Microsoft Scrambles To Fix Zero-Day Flaw In Microsoft JET Database Engine

Microsoft came under fire this week for missing the deadline to fix a zero-day bug in its JET database engine that could allow remote code execution.

Thursday the Zero Day Initiative disclosed details about the bug, saying the problem was reported to Microsoft on May 8 and that the flaw remained unpatched, despite exceeding a 120-day disclosure timeline.

The ZDI said an attacker could leverage the vulnerability, an out-of-bounds write, to execute code on a targeted system. But to succeed the attack requires a targeted user to open a malicious file.

Threatpost said Microsoft told the security site that it was working on a fix for the unpatched flaw.

Amazon's Twitch Game-Streaming Service Blocked In China

Did Amazon get on China's bad side? The company's Twitch game-streaming service, which has been gaining in popularity in that country in recent months, has been unreachable since Thursday, according to BBC News and CNN reports.

Both news sites also reported that the Twitch application has been removed from the Apple's iOS App Store in China.

Twitch has confirmed that its service, which allows users to watch and broadcast competitive video game playing, is being blocked, but has not said why.

CNN said Twitch surged in popularity in August when Chinese gaming fans used the service to watch the Asian Games eSports video game competition in Jakarta, Indonesia.