Discovery Inc. Case Study: Breach Prediction
- Threat Beta,
Discovery Inc.’s Threat Beta vs. Stock Price
Background
Work login password credentials of a limited number of Discovery employees may have been compromised. An unauthorized party may have had access to those employees’ login password credentials (username and password).
Financial Impact
A significant drop in Discovery’s stock price may or may not have been related to the pending news of a breach. Additionally, these cases have unknown costs in terms of lost productivity and other indirect financial losses. Given the lack of cybersecurity progress in the subsequent year, it’s assumed that losses were modest. More substantial losses would have galvanized executives to invest more in cybersecurity prevention.
Lessons Learned
Continuing cybersecurity investments could have prevented this breach; unfortunately, risks stayed higher. Access to employee credentials could have lead to other unidentified data losses. Although this particular breach was not catastrophic, the next one maybe. Even a modest impact to Discovery’s stock price would cost millions in avoidable damage.