Impact of cyberattacks on stock performance: a comparative study

Purpose: The study uses cyberattacks announcements on 96 firms that are listed on S&P 500 over the period from January 03, 2013, to December 29, 2017. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis was performed in two ways: cross-section and industry level. The authors use statistical test...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Atsu, F. (Author), Buchanan, W. (Author), Tweneboah-Kodua, S. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
LEADER 03199nam a2200289Ia 4500
001 10.1108-ICS-05-2018-0060
008 220706s2018 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 20564961 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a Impact of cyberattacks on stock performance: a comparative study 
260 0 |b Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.  |c 2018 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1108/ICS-05-2018-0060 
520 3 |a Purpose: The study uses cyberattacks announcements on 96 firms that are listed on S&P 500 over the period from January 03, 2013, to December 29, 2017. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis was performed in two ways: cross-section and industry level. The authors use statistical tests that account for the effects of cross-section correlation in returns, returns series correlation, volatility changes and skewness in the returns. Findings: These imply that studying the cumulative effects of cyberattacks on prices of listed firms without grouping them into the various sectors may be non-informative; financial sector firms tend to react cumulatively to cyberattacks over a three-day period than other sectors; and technology firms tend to be less reactive to the announcement of a data breach. Such firms may possibly have the necessary tools and techniques to address large-scale cyberattacks. Research limitations/implications: For cross-section analysis, the outcome shows that the market does not significantly react to cyberattacks for all the event windows, except [−30, 30], while for the sector-level analysis, the analysis offers two main results. Practical implications: First, while there is a firm reaction to cyberattacks for long event window for retail sector, there is no evidence of a cumulative firm reaction to cyberattacks for both short and long event windows for the industrial, information technology and health sectors. Second, the firms in the financial sector, there is a strong evidence of cumulative reaction to cyberattacks for [−1, 1] for the financial industry, and the reactions disappear for relatively longer event windows. Social implications: These imply that studying the cumulative effects of cyberattacks on prices of listed firms without grouping them into the various sectors may be non-informative, the financial sector firms tend to react cumulatively to cyberattacks over a three-day period than other sectors, technology firms tend to be less reactive to the announcement of a data breach, possibly such firms may have the necessary tools and techniques to address large-scale cyberattacks. Originality/value: The work provides new insights into the effect of cyber security on stock prices. © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited. 
650 0 4 |a Abnormal returns 
650 0 4 |a Computer science 
650 0 4 |a Computers 
650 0 4 |a Costs 
650 0 4 |a Cumulative average returns 
650 0 4 |a Cyber-attacks 
650 0 4 |a Data breaches 
650 0 4 |a Event studies 
650 0 4 |a Event study methodology 
650 0 4 |a Impact of cyberattack 
650 0 4 |a Stock performance 
700 1 |a Atsu, F.  |e author 
700 1 |a Buchanan, W.  |e author 
700 1 |a Tweneboah-Kodua, S.  |e author 
773 |t Information and Computer Security