A federal whistleblower lawsuit alleges IBM and AT&T repeatedly allowed foreign hackers to breach their systems and then failed to disclose the intrusions to the U.S. government, according to a complaint made public this week after the Justice Department declined to intervene. The former IBM threat-intelligence vice president, William Barlow, says massive compromises affected IBM’s cloud infrastructure used by many parts of the U.S. government, and that AT&T’s “Core Network” operated for IBM formed part of the affected system. The filing claims the companies sometimes could not determine what was taken and that IBM downplayed or concealed incidents despite contracts requiring certifications about unresolved cybersecurity issues. IBM spokesperson Adam Pratt said the company is confident it followed the law; AT&T did not respond to requests for comment. For higher education, the case highlights the compliance risk facing institutions and vendors that rely on major federal contractors and cloud services—especially where security attestations and incident reporting obligations carry legal consequences.