Pre and Post-transaction cyber security validations to help you make better informed M&A decisions
From cybersecurity angle, M&A transactions have been traditionally a matter of finance and to some level of IT unification post-transaction. When you are taking on another business, it also means taking on digital operations of a target entity. How can you trust these assets by merely looking at balance sheets and not looking at risk exposure of assets responsible for digital operations? Thorough compliance, including technical work, defines the accurate perspective. Unfortunately, tick-in-the-box is a larger vulnerability in your environment, exposing two businesses meant to be one.
Defendza's identification of risk affecting in-scope assets, the acquirer's counsel is better prepared to include risks, mitigations in the acquisition agreement that may or may not have directly associated cost.
Majority of the M&A transactions involve unification of assets to ensure seamless communication via digital assets. This unification of two different IT landscapes offer different threats; without this threat assessment, there's a lot at stake in case of potential vulnerabilities that could expose and lead to data breaches. The most recent high profile data breaches related to Yahoo/Verizon and Marriott/Starwood deals affecting millions of customers, and led to the devaluation of deals.
We have a dedicated security assessments FAQ section. Read it here.
At a high level, a M&A due diligence process contains the following phases:
We take customer communication as seriously as reporting or assessment execution. We engage with customers during all stages, and ensure that customer contacts are up to date in the language they understand. Post engagement, a free debrief is conducted to help the customers understand the weaknesses and prepare a mitigation plan.
The assessment-execution phase is followed by the analysis & reporting. Defendza performs analysis on the testing output, evaluates the risk impact and likelihood of exploitation in realistic scenarios before providing action plans to remediate the identified risks. All our reports address business as well as the technical audience with supporting raw data, including mitigation measures at strategic and tactical levels.
Evaluate the current security initiatives (cybersecurity programs) around people, processes, and technology areas.
Identification of digital assets that should be part of the scope.
Evaluate the importance of these assets to the target business.
Our reports are comprehensive and include all the evidence that supports our findings. We give you a risk rating that considers how likely an attack is as well as the impact it could have. We don’t create panic scenarios. Our mitigation is detailed, covering both strategic and tactical areas to help our clients prepare a remediation plan.
Apart from the range of commercial and open source tools available for specific testing, our team has its own custom scripts for efficient testing. We provide accurate results to make sure our clients completely understand any vulnerabilities we report.
Our teams are led by veteran security consultants accredited by CREST standards for the last several years. Our experience shows that our clients are best served by giving them the right advice for their cyber security needs. We do not believe in spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt to generate more business.
Much of the manufacturing industry has failed to take proactive steps to defend against cyber attacks—which is a notable problem considering the growing threats the industry faces
