Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

 

4

A STRONG PRIVACY POLICY CAN SAVE YOUR COMPANY MILLIONS

by Kelly D. Martin, Abhishek Borah, and Robert W. Palmatier

Cyberattacks are on the rise, with over 1,000 data breaches occurring at U.S. organizations in 2016 alone, most often through hacking or external theft. And it isn’t only violated firms that are hurt by these incidents. Studying hundreds of data breaches, our research has found that data breaches sometimes harm a firm’s close rivals (because of spillover effects) but sometimes help them (because of competitive effects). We also found that a good corporate privacy policy can shield firms from the financial harm posed by a data breach—by offering customers transparency and control over their personal information—while a flawed ...