Should you disclose a data breach via social media? Evidence from US listed companies

Pierangelo Rosati; Peter Deeney; Mark Cummins; Lisa van der Werff; Theo Lynn

Should you disclose a data breach via social media? Evidence from US listed companies

Pierangelo Rosati, Peter Deeney, Mark Cummins, Lisa van der Werff, Theo Lynn

Accounting And Finance

Research output: Contribution to conference › Proceeding › peer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Data breaches represent one of the main concerns for executives across all sectors. Data breaches open a period of crisis for the affected firm and require them to disclose complex information to a variety of stakeholders in a timely and proper manner. This paper investigates the relationship between social media disclosure of a data breach and its cost, as proxied by the response of the affected firm’s stock price. Using an event study methodology on a sample of 32 data breaches from 29 US publicly-traded firms from 2011 to 2014, we find that social media disclosure exacerbates the negative stock price’s response to the announcement. However, such a negative association is contingent on firm’s visibility on traditional media with social media disclosure having a beneficial effect for low-visibility companies.

Original language	English
Pages	4772-4781
Number of pages	10
Publication status	Published - 6 Jan 2018
Event	51st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2018 - Big Island, United States Duration: 2 Jan 2018 → 6 Jan 2018

Conference

Conference	51st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2018
Country/Territory	United States
City	Big Island
Period	2/01/18 → 6/01/18

Funding

The research work described in this paper was supported by the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce, an Irish National Technology Centre funded by Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Industrial Development Authority.

Keywords

information security and privacy
crisis communication
cybersecurity
data breach
social media
stock market

Cite this

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Should you disclose a data breach via social media? Evidence from US listed companies

Abstract

Conference

Funding

Keywords

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