Publication:
Data Breaches and Accounting: Three Essays

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1191594_alkhoury_publicacion_tesis.pdf (3.77 MB)
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2025
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Carrera, Nieves
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IE University
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3844
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This dissertation examines key challenges in firms’ data security, focusing on board interlocks, scientific disclosures, and audit offices, through an analysis of secondary data from multiple sources. In Chapter 1, I examine whether spillover effects of data breaches present themselves through board interlocks. In testing this, I empirically show that interlocking to previously breached firms or firms that will experience a breach, puts focal firms at a higher risk of experiencing a breach. The findings show a dark side of interlocking, and contribute to the corporate governance, spillover effects, data security, and social capital literatures. In Chapter 2, I investigate how exposure to data breach risk affects firms’ issuance of scientific publications. In doing so, I examine how peer breaches impact firms’ publishing decisions. I argue that firms publish less to avoid signaling valuable intellectual property, revealing an indirect economic cost of data breaches. This study contributes to the literature on non-financial disclosures, and answers calls for more research on publishing incentives and non-traditional disclosures. In Chapter 3, I move the focus to audit offices and assess the effect of audit offices’ cybersecurity experience and range of industry experiences on their clients’ breach likelihood. I find that clients are more likely to experience a breach when the audit office has had a previously breached client or will have a breached client. However, this breach likelihood is decreased when auditors have a broad industry range. This study contributes to the cybersecurity research within the auditing literature and to the literature on the effects of audit office experiences. Also, it is valuable to regulators in the public domain. Taken together, these three chapters are relevant and timely given the increased impact and significance of data breaches. As such, these studies should have a contemporary appeal to both academics and practitioners.
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Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
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IE Business School
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Alkhoury, C. (2025) Data Breaches and Accounting: Three Essays. (Tesis doctoral)
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