CYBER RESILIENCE SERVICES
Due Diligence Assessments with Critical Insights for M&A
Cybersecurity assessments are a key factor during due diligence for successful M&A integration. But a traditional "umbrella" risk assessment leaves gaps that increase risk.
True assessments use established control frameworks, such as NIST, ISO 27002, or CSC 20 to measure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a Target’s assets across critical domains. This information helps prevent you from acquiring hidden digital liabilities, protects you from inheriting costly data breaches, and preserves deal valuations. The findings inform the roadmaps that define what’s needed to build resilience for the combined organization post-close.
Given the increase in cyber risk during M&A, including from AI externally and the state of internal AI governance, security assessments impact the transaction in key areas including valuation, liability prevention, supply chain vulnerability and compliance. They help you understand what’s needed to integrate diverse security and IT infrastructures to achieve a resilient future end-state.
Therefore, assessments are not one-size-fits-all. Based on your specific needs and transaction velocity, you choose the assessments and the depth from a spot check to an overarching high-level review to an in-depth deep dive in the areas most important to you.
We’ve designed a Cybersecurity Technical Risk Assessment Process to ensure due diligence goes far beyond traditional superficial assessments that result in unknown vulnerabilities, unforeseen tech debt, underfunded remediation and lost business advantage.
Conducted against an established control framework, comprehensive assessments inform the roadmaps guiding a successful post-close integration. Understanding the interoperability of all parties’ tools, data, and processes offers visibility to plan for proactive security and secure integration from Day1.
IDENTITY IS THE NEW PERIMETER
Identity Due Diligence Assessment
Given the rapidly evolving threat landscape and growth in internal AI use, the state of Identity and Access Management (IAM) is increasingly important to a secure environment.
An identity assessment evaluates and maps concurrent identity stores to discover orphan accounts, over-privileged legacy users, and conflicting directories.
Given the findings, we then evaluate options, such as enforcing immediate Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), Multi-Factor Authentication, Privileged Access/Identity Management establishing cross-domain authentication. Most often, we can help you plan to make these changes without disrupting workflows.
KNOW WHAT YOU'RE INHERITING
Vulnerability Due Diligence Assessment
Most organizations have a backlog of unpatched firmware and exposed CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), and in some cases, unresolved legacy vulnerabilities.
It’s a matter of how they structured their priorities given the lack of time and resources experienced by many security and IT teams. Ultimately, you need to know what you’re inheriting from this new environment. Especially if your priorities differ.
A vulnerability assessment includes an end-to-end vulnerability scan to prioritize risks. It’s non-invasive, enabling the identification and prioritization of patches to complete before active integration begins.
SecureOps will perform a fresh vulnerability scan and impact assessment on the Target’s environment. Not only will this provide updated data, but the comparison with any existing or future planned patching policy will be spelled out to identify gaps.
Patching is very important–and a low-hanging fruit–for risk reduction. But this review is also useful as a proxy for what else could be non-compliant vs. the declared security policy.
Look Beyond Internal Vulnerabilities to Threat Intelligence
Internal vulnerabilities only tell half the story. M&A announcements frequently attract cybercriminals looking to exploit transitional chaos. To evaluate the target’s external risk profile and historical exposure, SecureOps integrates comprehensive threat intelligence monitoring.
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Capability |
Focus Area |
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Brand Protection |
Continuous monitoring for lookalike domains, rogue social media profiles, and spoofed applications designed to exploit the target's brand or deceive their customers. |
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Dark Web Monitoring |
Scanning underground forums and marketplaces for compromised employee credentials, leaked proprietary data, or initial access broker (IAB) listings related to the target. |
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Threat Actor Activity |
Tracking threat actor chatter, historical breaches, and active campaigns specifically targeting the organization, its supply chain, or its broader market segment. |
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Active Takedowns |
Proactive disruption of external threats through coordinated, rapid takedowns of malicious domains, phishing sites, and compromised infrastructure. |
DEFINE INVISIBLE RISK
AI Due Diligence Assessment
Using AI in some capacity is now commonplace for most Targets.
From Shadow AI tools to ungoverned agentic systems to AI-generated code without audit trails, the invisible risk compounds when inherited during integration.
The AI Assessment focuses on the automated discovery and inventory of AI systems, agent permissions, and Shadow AI tools across the Target’s environment. It also evaluates the state of AI governance (policy, controls, user education) and explores potential paths to data exposure to find inherited risk.
Recommendations guide planning to strengthen governance controls and improve AI-related security posture for post-close operations.
IDENTIFY MISCONFIGURATIONS, SYSTEM DRIFT, SHADOW IT
Configuration Due Diligence Assessment
From misconfigured cloud architectures, devices, and servers to a drift in system baselines over time to Shadow IT assets, configuration plays a key role in cybersecurity—and compliance.
The Configuration Assessment starts with examining the documented baseline of all target critical systems compared to current state. These can be anything from Servers/DCs/Critical Apps.
We focus on identifying configuration status, hidden assets, and current integration gaps.
If a large gap is found, change management processes and approval chains are examined more closely.
Recommendations include necessary steps to remediation and the orchestration of proactive compliance monitoring.
CONTINUE STRENGTHENING YOUR SECURITY POSTURE
SOC Monitoring Due Diligence Assessment
Traditional assessments treat security operations (SOC) and network operations as separate entities. Today’s environment requires an integrated approach.
Proactive, connected security removes the blind spots threat actors live to exploit. Assessing both together allows you to connect the dots about operational dependencies and gaps that increase the Target’s risk profile—or that may enable a threat actor to laterally pivot from the Target to the new parent company.
The SOC Monitoring Assessment looks for redundant feeds, optimization opportunities from SIEM to EDR and across security tooling to map out visibility gaps and unify telemetry log sources.
Recommendations informing roadmaps include steps to create end-to-end 24/7 visibility and connected processes.
Components of The SOC Monitoring Assessment include:
- Log Source Coverage
- Attacker Coverage (mapped to Attacker techniques in MITRE Att&ck! framework)
- Automation Analysis (focusing on high volume response playbooks)
- False Positive Analysis
- Process Coverage
- Optimization Analysis
GAIN END-TO-END VISIBILITY
Network Due Diligence Assessment
Flat network architectures that lack internal segmentation leave critical assets vulnerable if the perimeter is breached.
Shadow IT is also a persistent issue that weakens security posture. And legacy systems that cannot handle modern security controls raise risk, expanding the attack surface. Inconsistent controls present gaps to network security. Depending on the industry, these situations could create regulatory non-compliance.
The Network Assessment maps and visualizes your end-to-end network perimeter and the status of internal segmentation to discover interdependencies and questionable Target assets.
Recommendations include options for prioritization steps to orchestrate secure controls during active integration.
Additional Components of a Network Assessment may also include:
- Documentation Analysis
- Process Evaluation
- Change Management Evaluation
- Automation/AI/Optimization Analysis
- Critical Device Policy Analysis
DISCOVER CONFLICTS BEFORE YOU INHERIT THEM
Processes Due Diligence Assessment
Incomplete documentation, undetected or undisclosed past security incidents, reliance on self-assessment forms, and poorly tracked third-party dependencies can all impact the Target’s risk profile.
Incompatible incident response playbooks and conflicting operational workflows create potentially unrealized exposure gaps that increase risk post-close.
The Processes Assessment reviews the Target’s operational runbooks, detection logic, change management rules, and communication policies.
Recommendations provide guidance to create an end-to-end coordinated detection and response framework designed to build cyber resilience as a future state post-close.
UNCOVER EXPOSURE GAPS TO SENSITIVE INFORMATION
Data Due Diligence Assessment
Data is a critical asset that contributes to M&A deal valuation and an identifier of revenue growth.
However, data can also be a liability against compliance and legal requirements. Therefore, it’s critical to understand controls in place for PII, HIPAA, and other regulated data to ensure that controls are implemented proportionally in relation to business value vs. liability. This includes identifying or establishing continuous processes to ensure compliance.
The state of data security uncovers hidden risks, like inconsistent classification or poor third-party visibility, which could lower the purchase price. But data can also reveal synergies for cross-company efficiencies and go-to-market effectiveness.
The Data Assessment maps data flows, classification standards, governance policies and protection controls to uncover exposure gaps to sensitive information, including third-party access points.
Recommendations include steps to align governance policies and migration safeguards to protect critical data during integration and post-close.
KNOW THE MATURITY OF SECURITY GOVERNANCE
Governance, Risk and Compliance Due Diligence Assessment
A Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Assessment helps organizations evaluate the maturity of their security governance structures.
It identifies and prioritizes risk exposure, and confirms alignment with relevant regulatory, contractual, and industry compliance obligations (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST CSF, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, or GDPR depending on the client's sector).
As an MSSP-delivered engagement, it typically combines documentation review, stakeholder interviews, and control testing to produce a clear picture of current-state posture against a target framework, culminating in a prioritized roadmap of remediation actions.
High-level activities in a GRC Assessment typically include:
- Scoping & framework selection – Define assessment boundaries and select the applicable regulatory/industry framework(s) based on client industry, geography, and contractual obligations
- Governance review – Evaluate security policies, roles/responsibilities, org structure, and executive oversight of the security program
- Risk assessment – Identify, assess, and prioritize risks to assets, data, and operations; review the risk register and risk treatment methodology
- Compliance gap analysis – Compare current controls against the chosen framework's requirements to identify gaps and non-conformities
- Policy & procedure review – Assess whether documented policies exist, are current, and are actually being followed in practice
- Control testing/validation – Sample-test key controls (access management, change management, incident response, vendor risk, etc.) for design and operating effectiveness
- Third-party/vendor risk review – Assess how vendor and supply-chain risk is managed and monitored
- Findings & risk rating – Document gaps with a defined risk rating (e.g., critical/high/medium/low) and business impact context
