When you're in the process of making a huge monetary deal for your business with another company, it is best to be forthcoming and direct about the current condition your business is in. This includes being transparent with your staff, clients and business partners. If it's found that you have been less than honest about the state of your business, there are going to be significant repercussions.
If your business has come under cybersecurity threats and has been successfully breached, you stand to lose your reputation and clientele. But, if you're open and act scrupulously about what happened and demonstrate that you are making cybersecurity changes, the public will be more forgiving. If it's found that your company withheld this information to benefit itself, things might not go so well.
Yahoo's Cybersecurity Nightmare
The Bay Area-based company Yahoo! learned that it had been hit by a massive security breach in July 2016 in the largest cybersecurity breach to date. Yahoo users and Yahoo's pending-buyer, Verizon, did not know about this breach until September 2016. What's more, the breach occurred in 2014. This means that technically, Yahoo's users (and Yahoo, at least according to the company) had no prior knowledge that user passcodes, security questions and answers were stolen.
USA Today reports that for a lot of people, getting a password or security answer stolen isn't that big of a deal, especially as Yahoo users don't generally keep their other, more-private information stored away in their Yahoo email. However, users do tend to use the same passwords and security questions on other sites, so this is in fact vital information for a hacker. The hacker sells your information on the dark web for a price, and the nefarious characters who've purchased it will use it to target other websites you may frequent, getting your social security and credit card numbers.
Altogether the information stolen from the Yahoo data breach included email addresses, passwords, security questions, birthdates and telephone numbers. It's been thought that the biggest issue that will hit Yahoo are phishing scams. Yahoo has since told its users to change their passwords and security questions and to not open any emails or click on links that ask you for your login information, even if the email is said to have been sent to you from Yahoo directly. And if it asks for your credit card information, delete the email immediately.
Yahoo has advised all of its users to change their passwords immediately, check their banking statements for fraudulent charges and all emails carefully.
Though Yahoo stock has not been hit much since the cybersecurity breach, Senator Mark Warner has since called for the SEC to investigate the company. If it's found that Yahoo did not take proper measures in protecting their users or informing their buyer of the breach, there could be more dark times ahead for the troubled company.
In the age of the internet, your cybersecurity matters. Don't let cybercriminals destroy the business you worked so hard to build up. To find affordable cyber insurance policies, visit CyberPolicy today.
