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

2 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

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

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Keywords

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