On Friday, the UK software firm Sage Group notified about 200 of its UK customers that sensitive information, including their employee bank account details and salary information, may have been affected by a data breach; the firm has also now reported the breach to the City of London Police. More details about the causes of the breach will emerge over the next few weeks, but at this stage it merely adds to a growing list of organisations who have experienced this sort of incident (we reported only last month on how the Information Commissioner’s Office reported another significant rise in data protection incidents in its annual report).
What is already interesting though is how the incident has (or has not) affected Sage’s share price. For a listed firm such as Sage, the share price is expected to be hit severely after a high-profile loss of reputation such as this and, sure enough, the firm’s shares fell by about 4 % this morning. However, within a few hours the share price had recovered to the level it was at on Friday. No new information of note emerged in this period, so what has happened; do investors now regard such mishaps as an inevitable cost of doing business in the digital age, or are we all now just bored of these data breach stories?