Common Security Challenges in Corporate Acquisitions and Mergers
A guide for business leaders on handling security risks during mergers and acquisitions
The Hidden Security Debt of Acquisitions
When companies merge, a security problem shows up right away—and most don’t see it coming. You’re not just buying their tools or teams. You’re also taking on their entire security setup: weak spots, outdated systems, and habits that may not match your own standards.
Due Diligence Gaps: What You Don't Know Will Hurt You
Before the deal closes, security checks only show surface-level issues. The real problems appear during integration. That’s when hidden IT systems, custom setups no one documented, and security habits that worked alone—but break everything when merged—start to pop up.
The 90-Day Discovery Period: Most companies don’t fully understand the security risks until months after the deal is done. Old systems with unknown bugs, unused apps still holding sensitive data, and workarounds that skip proper controls all get exposed during this time.
Vendor and Third-Party Sprawl: The new company brings in its own stack of tools, vendors, and apps. Each one adds risk—and your current systems for handling third parties usually aren’t ready to manage this many at once.
Resource-Scale Mismatch: The Multiplication Problem
This is where security teams get hit hard: now they have to protect two or three times more apps, developers, and systems—but with the same team and tools. This isn’t just a temporary growing pain. It's a major shift, and traditional methods won’t fix it.
The Senior Talent Bottleneck: Even with a big budget, you can’t hire expert security pros fast enough. The people you bring in need months to really understand both companies’ systems and risks.
Context Switching Overload: Your current team now has to jump between different tech, tools, and risk types all day long. That constant switching makes them less effective—right when their workload is going up.
Cultural Integration Friction
Security isn’t just about tech—it’s about how people work. When two companies have very different security cultures, things get messy fast. That friction hurts both security and productivity.
Risk Tolerance Misalignment: What’s fine for one company might feel way too risky for the other. These differences lead to confusion, frustration, and bad decisions—either too strict, which slows people down, or too loose, which puts you at risk.
Tool and Process Disruption: Suddenly, developers have to deal with new tools, new approval steps, and new rules. That slows down work and opens new security gaps when people try to skip what they don’t understand.
Identity and Access Management Chaos
Giving people the right access gets way harder when you're dealing with two totally different systems. Quick fixes made “just for now” during the merger often become long-term security problems.
Orphaned Access Rights: As people change jobs or leave, their access doesn’t always get updated. They might still be able to log into systems the new company doesn’t even know about.
Privilege Escalation Risks: When you mix two companies’ user systems, people often end up with more access than they should. To keep things running smoothly, teams allow too much access—breaking the “least privilege” rule.
Compliance Multiplication Effect
Every company you bring in comes with its own rules for data and compliance. You’re not just dealing with more stuff—you’re dealing with way more complexity, as these rules overlap and sometimes clash.
Data Classification Conflicts: One company might treat personal data as public, while the other sees it as private. When systems combine, that mismatch can lead to compliance issues.
Audit Trail Fragmentation: Trying to track everything across systems with different logging styles becomes nearly impossible. That leaves gaps—and regulators will eventually notice.
Technology Integration Complexity
Legacy System Vulnerabilities: The acquired company might be using outdated systems that can’t be upgraded. These need to be connected to modern security tools, but they’re weak points that attackers will target.
Network Security Boundaries: Joining two networks while keeping them safe is tricky. Temporary fixes often stick around too long and become security holes.
Data Migration Risks: Moving sensitive data between different systems creates risk. Data that was secure in one place might be exposed while being moved.
The Business Impact
These security issues don’t just cause tech problems—they can hit the business hard. If security slows down integration, you delay the benefits of the deal. If there’s a breach, the whole value of the acquisition could fall apart.
Integration Velocity Impact: Security often ends up being the reason the integration drags out. That happens when teams haven’t planned for how hard it is to scale security quickly.
Developer Productivity Costs: Security slowdowns don’t just block systems—they block people. If developers can’t move fast, you lose the talent and speed that made the deal worth it in the first place.
The companies that get this right know that old-school approaches don’t work anymore. You can’t just hire more people or add more rules. You need to use tech that scales your team’s expertise, not just its size.
How to Scale Your Team's Expertise
That's what Rezliant is for. Trained on your business' context, with the knowledge of top industry security leaders, the skills of your own trusted security engineers poured into an AI that can be made available company wide to support all their security decisions.
Which makes all the (potential) problems above exponentially minimized because you have Rezliant to guide you.
Want to try out Rezliant? Book a quick demo.