Mick Baccio

Breach Alpha: Trading on Cyber Fallout

When a company suffers a cyber breach, its stock price often takes a hit. But the timing and severity of the market’s reaction? That’s a moving target. What if you could get ahead of the curve—spot the signal early, and make your move before the herd?

This talk unpacks how public breadcrumbs like EDGAR filings, executive blog posts, and social media chatter can reveal breach activity before formal disclosures. We’ll explore how these signals differ by industry, how timing gaps between breach, announcement, and market response can be measured, and how those gaps open the door for strategic action—whether you’re looking to buy the dip, short the drop, or ride the volatility.

This isn’t just a theory deck. We’ll dive into case studies of real breaches, market misreads, and missed opportunities. Then we’ll show how a signal-driven approach to breach tracking can be used to build a legally sound, ethically grounded, and unapologetically opportunistic model for cyber-informed trading.

Mick Baccio is a globally recognized security strategist with a career spanning offensive operations, threat intelligence, and national-level incident response. He currently advises organizations around the world through his role at Splunk, helping security leaders improve operations through data-informed approaches. Mick was the first Chief Information Security Officer for a U.S. presidential campaign (2020), and previously served in the Obama White House as the Chief of the Threat Intelligence Branch. Mick’s work blends deep technical knowledge with a strong belief in team culture and institutional learning—bringing a unique perspective to the intersection of human and machine decision-making in security operations.

In his spare time, Mick teaches lockpicking and is a THRUNT Corp founder and serves as Chairman of the Board.