Lessons From the Yahoo Breach: 4 Practical Tips on M&A Due Diligence

The recent massive data breach at Yahoo Inc. offers several important lessons for companies that collect, store and handle user information. This breach has several ingredients that make it particularly interesting, from its massive size, to the long period between the breach and Yahoo's disclosure to the company's claim that a state-sponsored actor may have been responsible. One other uniquely interesting aspect of the breach is the timing. In July, Yahoo agreed to sell its core operating business to Verizon for $4.8 billion.