Mergers and Acquisitions Due Diligence
Ensure secure mergers and acquisitions with a comprehensive cyber security due diligence process to identify and mitigate risks
LRQA provides expert-led cyber security due diligence, ensuring secure mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) represent significant opportunities for business growth, but they also expose organisations to new cyber security risks. With the ever-evolving threat landscape, it is essential to assess the cyber security maturity of target companies before completing a deal. Our M&A cyber security due diligence services help you understand the cyber risks held by the target entity, providing you with a clear view of vulnerabilities, remediation needs and associated costs.
By integrating our expert cyber security assessments into your M&A strategy, you can mitigate risks, protect valuable assets and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements, helping you make informed decisions and secure the future of your business.
Award-winning expertise
Our cyber security team continues to achieve multiple vendor certifications, highly respected industry accreditations and international accolades, demonstrating the breadth, depth and impact of their services.
Our M&A cyber security due diligence services include:
Risk assessment
Evaluate the security posture of your target acquisition to uncover any vulnerabilities, threats, or compliance gaps.
Tailored threat intelligence
Receive in-depth intelligence about potential threats facing your target entity to better understand the broader risk landscape.
Incident response planning
Prepare your organisation for any post-acquisition cyber incidents with tailored incident response plans and strategies.
Supply chain assessment
Assess the security maturity of third-party vendors involved with your acquisition to ensure that the supply chain is not introducing unnecessary risks.
Our approach
Due diligence before a merger or acquisition
We know that in many cases, due diligence work can be constrained before a merger or acquisition due to time or access to the relevant people. Our services rely heavily on the speed of service and professional insight and are closely aligned with the universally recognised NIST Cyber Security Framework. Our work is tailored to your needs but typically follows the below phases:
Threat intelligence
As with many LRQA services, we start with a threat intelligence engagement. This allows us to assess the target’s attack surface, its likely weakness, and - importantly - any attack surface that is not currently understood quickly and easily.
Vulnerability Assessment
After the threat intelligence phase has commenced, and if permitted, we conduct an external vulnerability assessment. This allows us to use automated scanning techniques to quickly assess the security posture of the target's internet-facing infrastructure. If the threat intelligence phase has identified any previous unknown attack surface, we will seek permission to include that in the scope of this phase too.
Capability assessment
Our expert consultant will form an initial view of the information security posture of the target company and arrange one or more discussions with relevant personnel at the target company. Throughout all these activities.
Reports
We provide a management report which includes an introduction, high-level observations, a capability assessment, remediation tasks and costs and a more detailed Threat Intelligence report.
Why work with us?
Specialist expertise
Our cyber security experts hold multiple vendor certifications and accreditations as well as highly respected industry accreditations from CREST, the PCI SSC, ISC2, BCI, Chartered Institute of IT, and NCSC CHECK.
Industry leadership
We lead and shape industry on advisory boards and councils including the PCI SSC Global Executive Assessor Roundtable and CREST councils in the Americas, Asia, EMEA and the UK. We are certified by a range of governing bodies including the payment card industry and are approved as a Qualified Security Assessor.
Everywhere you are
Operating in over 55 countries, with more than 250 dedicated cyber security specialists and over 300 highly qualified information security auditors across the world, we can provide a local service with a globally consistent dedication to excellence.
Award winners
We have been recognized for the breadth and depth of our services – including the TEISS Award for Best Penetration Testing Service in 2024, Enterprise Threat Detection and Cloud Security awards at the Security Excellence Awards 2024 and the Stratus Award for Best Managed Cloud Security Service.
The world leader in CREST accreditations
We are proud to be the only organization in the world with a full suite of accreditations from The Council of Registered Ethical Security Testers (CREST).
Our team of consultants have achieved the highest accreditations for Penetration Testing, Red Teaming, Incident Response services and Threat Intelligence. In addition, we were also the first organization to be CREST accredited for our Security Operation Centre services.
