The #1 Risk for Business is Cyber
The number 1 risk for business is Cyber and this has rightly become a top priority for business leaders, boards of directors and audit/ risk committees.
Mergers, acquisitions and divestitures make the need for assurance in this area even more important.
Cybersecurity can have a significant impact on business value across the life cycleof an investment. By considering the cyber security risks and priorities at each stage of the deal process, you can mitigate risk, avoid post transaction overspending on security, and maximise the return on investment.
Importance of Due Dilligence
- M&A decision-makers must fully understand the potential risks a data breach would pose to critical business assets and functions, from intellectual property (IP) and operations to customer information and sensitive data.
- Ignoring these cybersecurity risks in M&A can leave a buyer exposed to a range of risks, including diminished revenues, profits, market value, market share and brand reputation.
- We can help you understand exactly what you’re buying and assist you to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited by potential hackers, quantify cyber risks as they relate to the deal and manage the mitigation or remediation of cyber risks.
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How we help
We help address the M&A cyber risk by:
Discovering hidden risks, such as technical vulnerabilities in your target company, data privacy non compliance and signs of cyberattacks that could be happening right now.
Valuing cyber risk for specific events, such as thefts of customer data or IP, or business and operational disruption.
Identify and quantify valuation considerations included estimated one-time and recurring costs to remediate cyber vulnerabilities or gaps in regulatory compliance helping you demonstrate to the board and regulators that you are proactively mitigating cyber risk —while protecting deal value and strategic drivers.
Reducing threats to the remaining company that can occur when companies separate, such as inadvertent loss of IP or exposure of critical assets.
Due Diligence Framework
We offer two streams of cyber due diligence to help you uncover, assess and address cyber security and privacy risk, both pre- and post-transaction.
Each service is customisable for each transaction. You can select and deploy a combination of services that best matches your risk concerns, timescales and deadlines, and the level of access to the target company.
Risk Assessment
Technical Assessment
Cyber Security
An independent risk assessment incorporating industry standard frameworks, such as ISO, PCI-DSS and NIST to help ensure compliance with any applicable regulations. Our approach allows us to conduct agile risk assessments, with the potential for a more thorough review if given access to internal systems.
Penetration Testing
Penetration testing, also known as pentesting, is an ethical cyber security assessment method aimed at identifying and safely exploiting vulnerabilities in computer systems, applications, and websites. By employing the tools and techniques used by real cyber adversaries, pen testing accurately replicates the conditions of a genuine attack, providing valuable insights for remediation.
Data Privacy
We will determine whether activities involving the processing of personal data are carried out in accordance with organisational data protection policies and procedures, and whether such processing meets the regulatory requirements of data protection law.
Vulnerability Assessment
Led by our team of Cyber experts, the vulnerability assessment identifies risks and vulnerabilities in computer networks, applications and hardware whilst providing a level of severity to those vulnerabilities.
Third Party Risk
We will thoroughly evaluate the potential risks associated with a target company's key vendors, suppliers, and business partners in relation to cyber and privacy risk during a merger or acquisition process, to identify any potential legal, compliance, operational, or reputational issues that could impact the acquiring company after the deal is completed.
Configuration Review
An insecurely configured network could give attackers an easy route into an organisation. Commissioning a qualified ethical hacker to conduct a build or configuration review helps to reduce this risk by identifying security misconfiguration vulnerabilities across web and application servers, web frameworks, and devices such as routers and firewalls.
