Adequate Disclosure

You're the CFO of a small public company that builds databases for merchant marketing. Every quarter, you file a 10Q form, which in theory is the financial equivalent of The Bachelor's "The Women Tell All" special.

If you've done your job right, there is no more valuable information to disclose, and you've adequately communicated everything about your company's performance in the last ninety days, mapped to the last year, mapped to your own published estimates of what you thought you would do. So it was a real bummer when you tried to log in last Tuesday and, instead of your email system coming up, there appeared a picture of a laughing clown, smoking a Cuban cigar and asking you for ransom to get your database back.

Hoping this was a joke, you tried to login to your database...and you got another laughing clown. As your career flashes before your eyes, you go through the process of filing an 8K used for special disclosure items, publishing to the world that your security systems were inadequate, that you had been hacked, and that you really didn't yet understand the extent of the damage and wouldn't until the FBI got involved.

And just as the hangman's noose is being tightened around your neck, you see yourself paying the $10,000 ransom to the 14-year old Russian kid who hacked you. Everyone pats your back as the wise statesman and life remains normal at the country club.

Then you hear wood creak, and as you fall, you realize that you are living a scene from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and yeah, your life is over. There's no forgiveness on Wall Street for hackings these days. But as you fade into oblivion, you at least feel good for having provided adequate disclosure of your imminent demise.