Security
The security pillar encompasses the ability to protect data, systems, and assets by taking advantage of cloud technologies.
During integration, a well-defined plan is important to integrate identities from both companies without any impact to users. It is critical to have an integration plan to avoid security and compliance issues after mergers and acquisitions. Both organizations involved in mergers and acquisitions activity must understand the other's data and network security posture to integrate workloads naturally. Both organizations need to work on merging or adapting to incidence response processes. Data privacy, security, and integrity need to be handled without any issues during integration.
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Access control: Integrating user access across different systems can lead to difficulties in managing permissions and ensuring proper access controls. This could result in unauthorized users gaining access to sensitive information.
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Network security: Merging networks can expose the organization to potential vulnerabilities. Incompatible security protocols and configurations may create weak points that attackers can exploit.
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Compliance and regulations: Merging companies often have different compliance requirements. Ensuring the integrated IT systems meet various industry regulations and standards can be complex and challenging.
During mergers and acquisitions, it is critical to identify and mitigate any integration security concerns. This involves conducting thorough due diligence on the target company to identify any potential security vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or risks. Once identified, these risks must be addressed through a combination of policies, procedures, and technologies to ensure that the merged organizations are secure.
Some of the key integration security concerns during mergers and acquisitions include:
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Data security: Protecting sensitive data during the transfer and integration process, such as customer information, intellectual property, and financial data.
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Network security: Protecting the network infrastructure and ensuring that it is secure and robust enough to support the combined organization's needs.
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Employee access: Providing appropriate access to employees from both companies to the systems and data they need to perform their jobs, while preventing unauthorized access.
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Third-party vendors: Managing the security risks associated with third-party vendors that the merged organization uses to provide services or support.
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Regulatory compliance: Complying with all relevant regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR.
Effective integration security planning and management are critical to ensuring that the merger or acquisition process does not result in any security breaches or disruptions to business operations.
The security pillar provides an overview of design principles, best practices, and questions. You can find prescriptive guidance on implementation in the Security Pillar whitepaper.
Questions
- MASEC 1: How do you plan to manage user and application identities across companies?
- MASEC 2: What security tools (AWS or third-party) do you use?
- MASEC 3: How do you plan to maintain your data security posture?
- MASEC 4: How can a company (buyer) gain confidence in compliance and regulatory needs?
- MASEC 5: How do you plan to maintain your network security posture?
- Resources
