Yahoo’s board of directors are taking action following that massive security breach that exposed 500 million user accounts. They came down hard on the executives at the company who knew about the hack, but did nothing to stop it. They detailed the investigation in their annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. You can check the whole thing out by clicking here if you like.
The board found that the folks in charge at Yahoo simply did not understand that threat posed by the breach and didn’t do nearly enough to stop it.
As part of the fallout, Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer lost her 2016 and 2017 equity award. That totals around $14 million dollars. Yahoo’s top lawyer also resigned without any severance package.
Not only did the security breach damage Yahoo’s reputation, it cost the company big bucks. Verizon knocked $350 million bucks off their offer to buy the email and web portal portions of the company due to the hack. Mayer says that she didn’t know anything about the breach until two years after in happened.
What do you think? Is Marissa Mayer paying enough of a penalty? Let us know in the comments.
~ Cynthia
If other users cancelled their accounts as I did, yahoo email would collapse sending a huge message to all companies. I had an account with yahoo pretty much since it began and I stayed with them after the first hack but this last one was too much for me so I dropped it. Unfortunately I’ve had to jump through hoops to cancel it. That shouldn’t happen.
Marissa Mayer probably did not know about the security breach. The people who have/had that responsibility should be punished. But, the CEO is always ultimately responsible. I think the $14 million penalty is sufficient.
Cynthia, I want you to know how much I appreciate these business updates. Thanks.