Yahoo Sheds New Light on Breaches At Senate Hearing

The data breaches that bedeviled Yahoo over the past several years have spurred an investigation by a Senate committee — and the efforts by the company at the highest executive echelons to combat nefarious activity and also improve cybersecurity practices may be examples of “too little, too late,” TechCrunch reported Monday.

As detailed by that site, snippets of activities undertaken by the firm in the wake of 500 million accounts being hacked in 2014 — on top of data being taken from one billion accounts in 2013 and further breaches in 2015 and 2016 — include daily meetings focused on security.  Those meetings have taken on importance ahead of the looming acquisition by Verizon.

The deal is slated to close within the next quarter, and the impact of the security breaches has taken the value of the deal down by $350 million to $4.5 billion.

Security efforts have included weekly company-wide security briefings offered up by CISO Bob Lord.

There are other efforts in place as well.  As reported by TechCrunch, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has been given details of Yahoo’s efforts that show that cooperation with government and law enforcement officials stretches across state and federal layers. The firm has hired a risk management executive, unnamed to the media as of yet.  The firm is also boosting its Advanced Persistent Threat team to combat state-sponsored hacks and hack attempts. There is also an independent committee in place that takes its genesis from the Yahoo board of directors to investigate data breaches against the company.  Presentations from that committee to the Senate panel are as yet unscheduled, but will also delve into the timeline of events surrounding those aforementioned hacks.