The Effect of Malicious Cyber Activity on the U.S. Corporate Sector

We compile a comprehensive dataset of adverse cyber events experienced by U.S. firms. We then categorize cyber incidents by their detrimental impacts on firms' assets and operations, e.g., data theft, ransomware attacks, security breaches, denial of service attacks, and show that firms suffer significant value losses across multiple cyber categories. These losses also spill over to economically linked firms, thereby amplifying the negative effect of malicious cyber activity on the economy. We also compile a lexicon to identify from public sources firms that possess trade secrets, work on emerging technology or critical infrastructure projects, or have government and defense contracts, and show that such firms face a higher risk of a cyber incident.