Security

In mergers and acquisitions, the security pillar focuses on the security capabilities that are required to protect the application, identities, and data as they move between systems during integration. It is important to assess the security posture of the target organization and identify any gaps or vulnerabilities that may exist. This includes a review of the network infrastructure, applications, privileged access, monitoring, protection of data, security policies and procedures. There are several important security considerations during a mergers and acquisitions integration:

1. Protect sensitive data: During mergers and acquisitions, sensitive data is exchanged between the companies, including intellectual property, customer data, financial information, and employee records. It is important to protect this data through encryption and access controls. Any data breach during this phase can have major consequences.

2. Integrate security policies and controls: The merging companies likely have different security policies, controls, and technologies in place. It is important to review these and integrate them into a consistent and comprehensive set of policies and controls that meet compliance and regulatory requirements for the combined organization.

3. Assess risks from new network connections: New network, system and devices connections are established between the companies during integration. It is important to assess the security risks from these new connections and set up proper controls (like firewall rules and vulnerability scanning). Ensure new processes are developed for threat detection and incident response mechanisms and breach notification. Ensure privacy preserving mechanisms and strong data governance is in place against unauthorized access.

4. Train employees: Employees need to be trained on the new integrated security policies, controls, and processes to ensure compliance. Phishing simulations and security awareness training are especially important to reduce risks from social engineering attacks during transition.

5. Monitor closely: Mergers and acquisitions integrations significantly expand attack surface and risks. It is critical to closely monitor and act on any critical security findings, like unauthorized access, potential credential leaks, violation of least privilege access, data breaches, and malware infections. Security operations teams need to be on high alert and ready to respond quickly to any issues.

6. Include security in mergers and acquisitions planning: Security needs to be part of the planning and integration process from the beginning. Waiting until after a deal is signed to involve security teams can expose both companies to risk. Security requirements and risks need to be evaluated before the deal, and a comprehensive security, privacy and compliance integration plan should be part of the overall mergers and acquisitions plan.

Best practices for data and application access, network connectivity, and data security are critical to ensure privacy and compliance for the combined organizations. This lens provides security guidance on best practices like:

• Establish security standards across combined organization

• Secure network communication for application integration across companies

• Monitor, detect and protect against security vulnerabilities workloads across combined companies

• Establish mitigation process to respond and recover from security incidents

• Define process to ensure privacy compliance as per combined company requirement

Figure 3: Security considerations for an AWS buyer and on-premises seller

Network connectivity is utmost to ensure data security and optimize data transfer cost. Design secure, cost-optimized network architecture using AWS services like AWS Direct Connect, AWS Transit Gateway, or AWS Site-to-Site VPN. We also recommend securing workloads and protecting applications from security attacks like DDoS, malware, and ransomware using AWS services.

Figure 4: Security considerations for AWS to AWS mergers and acquisitions

In this scenario (as shown in Figure 4), customer should use AWS technologies for integration. Both buyer and seller have adopted AWS as their primary cloud provider. They need to establish secure network communication between multiple AWS accounts that may be within a single Region or between multiple Regions. AWS Organizations allows you to consolidate multiple AWS accounts into a single organization. This can be beneficial for a number of reasons, including:

• Centralized management and governance: Manage all AWS resources from a single console, making it easier to track and manage your spending, security, and compliance.

• Security and compliance: You can apply security policies and controls to all of your accounts from a single location, ensuring that your resources are protected and compliant with industry standards. You can easily securely share resources and services across multiple accounts, making it easier for your team to work together and collaborate on projects.

• Cost savings: By consolidating accounts, you can take advantage of bulk pricing discounts and optimize your resource usage to reduce costs.

One of the key challenges of integrating security systems and controls from different organizations is the potential for conflicts between different security policies and procedures. It is important to identify and address these conflicts before they become a problem. This may involve developing a unified security policy that applies to all organizations, or it may involve implementing AWS control tower that provides centralized management and monitoring of security systems and controls. Another challenge of integrating security systems and controls is the potential for data breaches and other security incidents. It is important to implement robust security measures, such as encryption, firewalls, and intrusion detection and prevention systems, to protect sensitive data and prevent unauthorized access.

By developing a comprehensive plan for integration and implementing robust security measures using AWS Cloud Adoption Framework approach, companies can uncover business requirements and securely integrate two disparate companies. This helps minimize the security risks during mergers and acquisitions and optimize overall integration time and cost.