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Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

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Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#131

Post by jack9 »

Swizec wrote: post #93
65827 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I mean the cost has always been there but this is the first time I recall lots of media coverage around the reality that incidents like this can cost billions, seems like it's finally sinking in.

I wonder how much this is influenced by shows like Mr. Robot where the entire plot revolves around infosec bringing down the world's massivest corporation. Of course Mr. Robot could itself be a symptom of the zeitgeist.

I don't think many people understand what computer security means either way and to get a qualitative answer, you need to know about almost every aspect of development AT A PROJECT LEVEL. what is a potential buyer going to ask, "how's your computer security?" - "it's great, ok"

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#132

Post by dmurray »

cmurf wrote: post #120
bmh100 wrote: post #57

One benefit of these incidents at Yahoo! is that they represent salient, clear examples of the cost of poor information security. CIOs and security directors will be able to point to this deal as evidence that poor security can have material impact on the business and destroy massive shareholder value, even years after the fact. A 6.5% intra-day dip sends a clear message. Even a CFO can now see that information secur…

The stock price is a paper loss, it means nothing if Yahoo is acquired for the full purchase price Verizon asked for. So it remains to be seen if there's any meaningful punishment by the market for these kinds of breaches. Even if 6.5% stands, it's basically saying the per user value/cost of the breach is about a quarter (as in the coin).

The article is about Verizon threatening to pull out of the deal, or use the breach as leverage to secure a lower price. The market thinks that may happen, hence the fall in price.

Even if Verizon end up paying the full price, the fact that investors really worried that they wouldn't is enough to share future companies.

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#133

Post by hughw »

mholmes680 wrote: post #115
__derek__ wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does not have much high impact negative publicity associated to it (yet). A billion compromised accounts seems like it could fill that role. Many people may not understand their online information's privacy/security, but that's an ear-grabbing number.

Agreed. Anecdotally, my mother called me last night asking what she needed to do about Yahoo's new breach. I said, no no, dont worry we already changed your password. She said nope, NEW news! My mother (and her news) heard this loud and clear. Thats a problem, and VZ has every right to renegotiate -- this has passed the point of "we're yahoo so we're big and an unlucky target". This is, in my mother's words, "what th…

If you changed her password in September, you shouldn't have to change now, right? Since the "new" breach is from 2013.

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#134

Post by fooey »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #122
mtgx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not giving the NSA root access to your servers and to everyone's data should also help.

To be fair it's a post Snowden world and it's clear everyone is doing this. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else who operates in the USA are giving the NSA everything. If you care about your data you are basically only able to secure it if you host it yourself.

Even then, if you're a big enough target, how confident can you be that Dell or Cisco or Intel or AT&T or Seagate aren't giving them a backdoor into your operation anyways?

It's pretty revolting, but my assumption is that if the US government _really_ wants your data, it's virtually impossible to block all the vectors they have to get at it.

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#135

Post by enraged_camel »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #118
bmh100 wrote: post #57

One benefit of these incidents at Yahoo! is that they represent salient, clear examples of the cost of poor information security. CIOs and security directors will be able to point to this deal as evidence that poor security can have material impact on the business and destroy massive shareholder value, even years after the fact. A 6.5% intra-day dip sends a clear message. Even a CFO can now see that information secur…

This is a really important point. Yahoo!'s troubles help make a quantitative point to people who care only about money. Having been in the role of advocating investing in security the typical questions are; * "Will the product run faster?", * "Will the customers get better service?", * "Will someone choose us over a competitor because of this?" Generally 'no', 'no', and 'hard to quantify' so the answer to the funding…

Isn't the answer to "will the customer get better service" a definitive "yes"? I mean, obviously it depends on the UX of said security feature(s), but generally speaking, more secure == better. Right?

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#136

Post by dmurray »

nostrademons wrote: post #119
spoinkaroo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The yahoo dip is even larger, considering yahoo's stock is primarily Alibaba. If it were split into two companies the dip would likely be >20%.

Other sources [1] estimate the impact on Yahoo's core business, after subtracting out Alibaba's stock movements, at about $1.3B. On a $4.8B deal, that's about 27%. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-12-15/yahoo-s...

Other sources [0] say Yahoo's core business is negatively valued. How much worse could this make it?

[0]http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/070215/why-yahoos... from April, but the prices haven't moved too much since.

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#138

Post by x0x0 »

Kurtz79 wrote: post #97
x0x0 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make plenty of money gross. Fire 80% of the staff and they'll be very profitable net as well.

You are assuming that other costs apart from salaries are negligible and that firing 80% of the staff will have negligible effect on revenue. They are pretty big assumptions to make.

First assumption, other costs are negligible: no, I'm not. Every dollar spent on salary is a dollar that doesn't go to profit.

Second assumption: letting 80% of staff go won't hurt. For that, I simply have to describe what I've heard from friends / coworkers / scuttlebutt about working at yahoo. But there are a lot of eng doing maybe a couple hours of work per day.

from

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/YHOO/financials?p=YHOO

under opex it looks like there's plenty of fat to cut.

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#139

Post by jmquigs »

bmh100 wrote: post #57

One benefit of these incidents at Yahoo! is that they represent salient, clear examples of the cost of poor information security. CIOs and security directors will be able to point to this deal as evidence that poor security can have material impact on the business and destroy massive shareholder value, even years after the fact. A 6.5% intra-day dip sends a clear message. Even a CFO can now see that information secur…

On the flip side, it could also convince executives that they need to cover up security breaches as much as possible.

Re: Verizon Explores Lower Price or Even Exit from Yahoo Deal

#140

Post by spoinkaroo »

nostrademons wrote: post #119
spoinkaroo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The yahoo dip is even larger, considering yahoo's stock is primarily Alibaba. If it were split into two companies the dip would likely be >20%.

Other sources [1] estimate the impact on Yahoo's core business, after subtracting out Alibaba's stock movements, at about $1.3B. On a $4.8B deal, that's about 27%. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-12-15/yahoo-s...

The drop seems excessive to me, even taking into account BABA's daily performance. Bought some shares but didn't bother hedging against BABA so it's essentially an investment in BABA and baby arb, would definitely look into more serious hedging if I were managing more capital.
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