Just as the pending multi-billion dollar deal to sell Yahoo’s core assets to Verizon was set to close, Yahoo discovered that 500 million user accounts had been hacked in 2014. Craig Silliman, general counsel for Verizon, said last week that the company believes the breach had a material impact on the value of the sale, causing speculation that they may be reassessing the deal.
Milan Patel, managing director at K2 Intelligence, noted that while attorneys are starting to incorporate more of the growing demand for due diligence around cybersecurity into their common practices, they often do so at the tail end of negotiations, leaving little room to change course.
