Abstract
Purpose Targeting Korean companies listed on Korean securities markets (i.e., KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets), this study aims to shed lights the effects of personal information security breaches on stock prices of information security companies. Interestingly, this study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to examine the information transfer effect on personal information security breaches of companies. Design / Methodology /Approach To examine the information transfer effect of personal information security breaches, our study employs the event study commonly used in financial studies. To this end, we investigate a variety of events of personal information security breaches of companies listed on the KOPSI stock market and the KOSDAQ market. We collect the total samples of one hundred and twelve with forty seven of events of personal information security breaches by thirty companies and sixty five of information security companies. Findings The principal findings from the empirical study are as follows. First, for companies of personal information security breaches, our event study presents the significantly negative AAR (averaged abnormal return) value on the event day at the 5 % level and the highly significant negative CAAR(cumulative averaged abnormal return) value on the event day and the day after the event day at the 1 % level. The results suggest that personal information breaches significantly contribute to an decrease in value of the information breached companies. The cross sectional regressions in this study estimate the significantly negative coefficient for the ME/BE variable, the proxy for a growth opportunity at the 5 % level. This suggests a reverse relation between the growth opportunity of companies and their value. As for the various samples of the information security companies categorized by physical security, network and system security, security application software, code authentication, system integration, we find the significantly positive AAR on the day after the event day at the 5% level, only for the network and system security-companies. This addresses that the information transfer effect followed by personal information breaches is uniquely observable for companies categorized into network and system companies. The regressions for the network and system companies estimate the significantly positive coefficient for the NS dummy variable (i.e., the dummy of the network and system security companies) at the standard level. This allows us to identify appropriate times needed to make the information transfer effect realized from personal information breached companies to information security companies.