Hillicon Valley — Workday, PayPal follow tech layoff trend

Workday and PayPal announced layoffs Tuesday, following other widespread layoffs hitting the tech industry.  

Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East and North Africa announced they are including cybersecurity collaboration as part of its expansion of a 2020 agreement to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab countries. 

This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Send tips to The Hill’s Rebecca Klar and Ines Kagubare. 

More layoffs hit tech firms 

Workday and PayPal announced layoffs on Tuesday, adding to the growing trend among the tech industry.  

The cloud software company Workday plans to cut hundreds of jobs as it lays off about 3 percent of its global workforce.  

• The company told employees in a message on Tuesday that it decided to restructure and realign some teams across the company, leading to the layoffs, the majority of which will be those working on product and technology, according to a copy of the message from the Securities and Exchange Commission. 
• The message said company leaders will meet with the affected employees and expect notifications to be completed by the end of the day Tuesday, Pacific Standard Time. 

PayPal announced on Tuesday that the company will lay off 2,000 employees, which is about 7 percent of its workforce. 

• CEO and President Dan Schulman wrote in a message to employees shared on the company website that while PayPal made “substantial progress” in restructuring its cost structure and prioritizing its allocation of resources, more work needs to be done. He said the downsizing will occur within the next few weeks, and that some organizations in the company will be “impacted more than others.” 
• “Change can be difficult – particularly when it includes valued colleagues and friends departing. We will face this head-on together, drawing on the unparalleled scale of our global platform, the strategic investments we have made to strengthen our core capabilities, and the trust and loyalty of our customers,” Schulman said in the message. 

Read more about the PayPal layoffs here and the Workday layoffs here.

US, Middle Eastern allies expand cyber collaboration

The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East and North Africa announced on Tuesday that they are broadening the Abraham Accords — a 2020 agreement to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab countries — to include cybersecurity. 

The expansion, which is still in the works, will include increasing the sharing of information on cyber threats and potentially adding tabletop exercises, The Washington Post reported.  

Rob Silvers, Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary for Strategy, Policy and Plans, told The Post that the expansion builds on existing cyber collaboration between the U.S., Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and will also include Bahrain and Morocco. 

“We’ll be meeting as a group to chart out how we can deepen our work on cyberdefense,” Silvers said. “Our countries face common cyber challenges — obviously, we all face cybercrime, ransomware and so forth.” 

Read more here.  

RUSSIAN HACKERS TARGET HEALTH CARE SECTOR 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) warned on Monday that pro-Russian hacktivist group Killnet is actively targeting the U.S. health care industry with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. 

HHS said in a notice that the group has been going after countries supporting Ukraine, including NATO members. 

“Although KillNet’s ties to official Russian government organizations such as the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) or the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) are unconfirmed, the group should be considered a threat to government and critical infrastructure organizations including healthcare,” HHS said. 

HHS cited several instances where Killnet targeted organizations in the health care sector, including one last year where the department said the group hacked a U.S.-based health care organization that supports U.S. military members and stole a large set of user data from the company. 

Read more here. 

BITS & PIECES

An op-ed to chew on: Why free speech advocates should be rooting for Google 

Notable links from around the web:  

Instagram’s co-founders are back with Artifact, a kind of TikTok for text (The Verge / Casey Newton) 

Tesla’s Self-Driving Technology Comes Under Justice Dept. Scrutiny (The New York Times / Jack Ewing and Cade Metz) 

Where will all the laid-off tech workers go? (Vox / Rani Molla) 

ONE MORE THING

DeSantis tells House to probe DirecTV decision

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is running to the defense of Newsmax, the conservative cable network that was ditched by carrier DirecTV last week. 

“I mean I think there should be no ideological litmus test or any kind of test when it comes to these big companies who can make the decision to make or break a news network or any type of network,” DeSantis said during a press conference on Tuesday.

“And they’ll give different rationales for why they don’t want to do it, but the reality is they have so much other content that is very lightly viewed and yet they keep that on and it seems it’s the One America News and the Newsmax who are being targeted, so I think it does warrant investigation.” 

DirecTV, one of the largest cable providers in the country, dropped Newsmax from its channel lineup last week following a dispute with the network over carrier fees. 

Read more here.  

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.