Analysis: The Impact of Data Breaches on Public Perception

It's no secret that a data breach is bad for your company. It very directly impacts share price. According to an analysis by Comparitech, share prices fall 7.27% on average and underperform the NASDAQ by -4.18% following a data breach. A data breach can also lead to class action settlements, like Equifax's $425 million settlement. 

But it's not the shareholders that are most impacted by a data breach, because it's not their personal data released into the world. It's your client's data. And it's the relationship with your clients that is most impacted when one of your systems is breached by bad actors.

To quantify the impact of a data breach on your client relationships, we analyzed Google Trend data leading up to and following five high-profile data breaches. We identified three key trends:

1. Search volumes peak the week a data breach is announced.
2. Search volume remains 40% higher over the six weeks following a data breach.
3. Increased search volume is primarily associated with negative sentiment search queries related to the data breach.