After a cyber attack, many companies prefer to remain as secretive as the hackers themselves—providing very little information about the breach and even hiding it from regulators and the public.

That silence, say online security experts, can lead to other companies falling prey to similar attacks or cause them to underestimate the risks. Worse, it can keep regulators in the dark about dangerous threats to critical national infrastructure, such as nuclear power plants and communications systems.

Jaclyn Jaeger is a freelance contributor to Compliance Week after working for the company for 15 years. She writes on a wide variety of topics, including ethics and compliance, risk management, legal,...