Technology companies including IBM, Oracle and Salesforce are working with governments and health agencies to manage the massive task of rapidly distributing COVID-19 vaccines.

Why it matters: It's critical to make sure the limited supply of vaccines is distributed equitably and without wasting precious doses.

Driving the news:

• Salesforce has a number of efforts to help agencies distributing the vaccine. It's working with global vaccine agency Gavi to equitably distribute the vaccine in 190 countries. Stateside, Salesforce is part of a project to manage Chicago’s vaccine distribution. The consultant behind that effort is shopping it to other local governments.
• Oracle donated a national health record database and public health management applications to the federal government that can track who has been vaccinated and any side effects. Oracle is also working with the Tony Blair Institute to bring similar systems to Africa.
• IBM is offering tech to help governments and private companies, including supply-chain management software and an open blockchain-based approach to authenticating the temperature and handling of each vaccine dose.
• Microsoft is working with a range of partners on vaccine management efforts, including consultancy EY, which is tapping Microsoft's cloud and business services.
• Google said its cloud unit has extended its pandemic response to help with vaccine intelligence and is working alongside partners to deploy vaccine management solutions with state and local governments.

The big picture: For tech, it's both a business opportunity and a chance for companies to tie the company to a critical societal need.

Yes, but: Tech could also be positioning itself for blame if there are hiccups in these systems. Remember the rollout of Healthcare.gov?

Between the lines: What’s tricky is there are so many players involved in getting the vaccine distributed, including pharmaceutical companies, shippers like UPS and FedEx, state and local governments, hospitals and drugstores.

• There isn't going to be a single supply chain management system, meaning each of those players will need to build their own capability and share data with other parts of the system.
• "This supply chain is enormously complex, probably more complex than any I’ve seen — and I worked with the defense industry," IBM VP Tim Paydos told Axios.

The vaccine is going to be in short supply for months, creating huge and competing demand and the need to make sure every available dose reaches someone in need.

• Risks include everything from cyber and physical attacks to counterfeit vaccines, diversion of real vaccines to the black market, and mismanagement that leads to spoiled vaccines.
• Plus, there isn't one vaccine, but a number of different ones, each with different dosing and temperature requirements.

The big picture: Tech companies are doing more than just helping governments and health authorities distribute the vaccine.

• Google, Facebook and Twitter are working to clamp down on vaccine misinformation.
• IBM, Clear and other firms aim to produce digital proof of vaccination for institutions like airlines, workplaces and schools.
• Google and Apple still offer their tech that uses smartphone proximity to tell if you've been in close contact with anyone who tests positive for COVID-19.

Security experts, businesses and government agencies are continuing their work to understand the scope of a massive cyber attack, while the finger-pointing and blame game is also picking up steam.

The big picture: Experts warn the attack could have severe repercussions given it went on for months, targeted key companies and government agencies and gained access to a wide swath of substantive information.

Catch up quick: The attack, attributed to Russia, began with the targeting of security firm SolarWinds. Gaining access there allowed the nation-state hackers access to information from a variety of high-profile agencies and companies, including the Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security departments.

What's new:

• Sen. Richard Blumenthal, after receiving a classified briefing, placed the blame squarely on Russia and called for more information to be made public.
• Microsoft and other companies seized a domain that was used in the attack, hoping to limit further damage.
• The Washington Post reported Tuesday that key investors in SolarWinds sold $280 million in the company's stock in the days before the attack was announced publicly.

What's next: Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, wrote in the Washington Post that the attack shows "something is wrong with how our country protects itself against the hackers working for our adversaries in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea."

• Stamos suggested the government could improve cyber response by creating an agency to investigate serious incidents; passing a data breach law that would make it mandatory to disclose more types of incidents; and ensuring key Biden administration roles are filled by people with "practical, hands-on defensive experience."

Facebook said Tuesday it will begin letting advertisers run ads targeting Georgia voters about the state's Jan. 5 runoff elections, starting at 12pm ET today, carving out an exemption to the U.S. political ad ban it has imposed since the November election.

Why it matters: The move comes days after Google lifted its own full post-election political ad ban. The updates from the two tech giants mean more digital ads will likely start being used to target voters in Georgia, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.

• Before these announcements, the hundreds of millions of ad dollars being spent on the Georgia election runoff races were mostly being poured into local broadcast ads, which are harder to target narrowly and measure for engagement.

Flashback: Facebook and Google both announced plans to ban ads after polls closed weeks before Election Day. Both extended their bans to minimize confusion around the elections.

• Facebook had also said previously that it didn't have the ability to cut off ads on a per-state basis.

Details: The company didn't say why it decided to allow ads to target voters in Georgia now, other than that it's heard feedback in recent weeks from experts and advertisers across the political spectrum about how important Facebook's tools are for managing political campaigns.

The big picture: Georgia's extraordinary runoffs for two Senate seats at once will determine which party controls the Senate.

What's next: Facebook says it's deploying the teams and technology it used in the general election to fight voter suppression, misinformation and interference in the Georgia elections.

Twitter on Tuesday said it's shutting down Periscope, the live-streaming app that it acquired in 2015 for $86 million. It's planning to remove the app from app stores by next March, Sara reports.

Why it matters: Live video streaming is today a common and popular feature among most social media apps. Periscope and its rival Meerkat, also released in 2015, were two of the first live-streaming apps to be introduced in the U.S.

Details: Twitter said it's sunsetting Periscope because the app has seen user declines for a while and the cost to maintain it is no longer justifiable. Most of the core capabilities of Periscope have been built into Twitter at this point, anyway.

By the numbers: To date, Sensor Tower estimates that Periscope has seen more than 101 million installs globally from across the App Store and Google Play.

• That's a small number compared to rival social media apps that have launched in the past few years, like TikTok, that include live video as part of a larger set of video creation tools.

The big picture: Stories like Periscope's are common in Silicon Valley: Tech giants acquire an upstart app, merge its tech and talent into their own products, then shut it down. Twitter's current product lead, for example, is Periscope co-founder Kayvon Beykpour.

• But Periscope's story is notable because of how long Twitter made the standalone app available to users after its acquisition, even after it became clear that it wasn't growing.

Flashback: Twitter acquired Vine, another short-form video app, in 2012. As with Periscope, the company purchased the app before its official release. Twitter shut down Vine in 2016.

On Tap

• Shares of ContextLogic, the parent of e-commerce app Wish, are expected to start trading after the company reportedly priced shares at $24 apiece, the high end of its expected range.

Trading Places

• Airtable has named former Uber and Facebook product executive Peter Deng as chief product officer and former Quibi financial chief Ambereen Toubassy is joining as CFO, the latest in a series of outside executive hires.
• Law firm Cooley has hired former Facebook associate general counsel Tiana Demas as a partner.
• Dropbox added Y Combinator group partner Michael Seibel to its board of directors.

ICYMI

• Brexits have consequences: Facebook is shifting legal oversight of U.K. users to its U.S. operations, putting them fully outside the protection of European data laws. (Reuters)
• Microsoft made available versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps that run natively on Macs with Apple's M1 chips. (ZDNet)
• Australian regulators sued Facebook for allegedly collecting user data without permission and using it to identify acquisition targets. (Axios)
• Germany is moving forward on conditionally allowing Huawei gear in its 5G networks, rejecting Trump administration entreaties to edge out the Chinese hardware maker. (WSJ)

Google has a fun new AI-infused tool called Blob Opera that lets anyone create their own music-making quartet of adorable blobs — no music talent required. Having no music talent, I can attest that is true. Here's my first creation.