DATA SECURITY CHECKLIST DURING M&A DUE-DILIGENCE

Mergers and acquisitions take a considerable amount of time; it takes a lot of resources to make them come true. Therefore, much depends on the quality of the preparatory stage. One of the most important steps is to protect your data. The following tips will help you carefully check the data before starting a transaction.

Check Social Media

Each social network is an invaluable source of information for attackers who collect personal data, which they then use to deceive and scam. What is information about your company available online? Is it possible to learn something more about it by analyzing data that seems to be open to everyone?

Secure corporate email

The mail often stores the “keys” to most of your accounts since the password recovery procedure is most often carried out using email messages. Therefore, it is vital to secure the main postal address to which the Internet bank and the essential services are linked.

Check what your company has published

Don’t post photos of documents, tickets, or paychecks online. Any information about your company can be used against you. In addition to payment information, scammers can pull out other information.

Check online services

If your company uses online services, check those as well. For example, they often use your data to sell more products through personalized ads or offers. Use corporate antiviruses if you do not want these organizations to earn on company data.

Check your company’s software

Sometimes, it may be that third-party plug-ins were installed on the company’s computers along with the licensed program. Such programs can be pretty harmless, or they can steal your data arrays and disrupt the company.

Before you jump into the big deals, make sure you don’t get a Trojan horse when you buy the software.

Prepare corporate Wi-Fi

Do not use open Wi-Fi networks. They may look like a perfectly reliable Internet source from a credible ISP, but you’ll have a hard time distinguishing “good” Wi-Fi from “bad” Wi-Fi. Moreover, a criminal would only need a laptop and a Wi-Fi adapter to create such a network. And scammers do use this method to intercept usernames and passwords of users trying to connect to the Internet using their Wi-Fi networks.

Come up with complex passwords

Avoid weak passwords. Weak combinations practically do not protect against anything. It’s not that hard to remember a strong password. If you are not ready to do this, use a unique program to manage passwords. This applies to all corporate files.

Buy a virtual data room subscription

When working with large amounts of information, you need to ensure that they are stored in a safe place. Unfortunately, computers have long ceased to be such. At first, offline storage was replaced by cloud storage. However, users have become convinced that they are not reliable enough over time. The cloud can be easily hacked; it does not have sufficient file security.

Therefore, virtual data rooms have been developed for severe companies. These are gigantic vaults that are protected by encryption, double authentication, and many privacy settings.

Here you can safely store your data. They are quickly uploaded to the virtual data room and transferred to other users of the room. You can decide for yourself who can do what in your room. After all, it is the administrator who distributes roles to users.