Package 05 · M&A Security Integration
“The deal closed. Now inherit
the security debt.”
Diligence checked the controls on paper. It rarely checks identity sprawl, shadow cloud, or who the acquired security team actually reports to. Those three decide your integration timeline.
What sets the price
- Number of entities in the transaction
- Identity systems and cloud tenants to unify
- Combined headcount and endpoint count
- How compressed the timeline is, and how many jurisdictions are involved
Who this is for
A private-equity operating partner or corp-dev lead who has closed and is now discovering what was not in the data room. Works best engaged at close; works fine engaged when the integration has already stalled.
What's actually wrong
Security debt is the one liability that does not appear on the balance sheet and does not resolve itself. Two identity systems that were each fine separately become an attack surface the moment you connect them. The acquired company's cloud footprint is bigger than its documentation. And the security lead's reporting line, which nobody negotiated, quietly determines whether anything gets done.
What you get
- Identity and network unification. Mapped and sequenced across both organizations, with the collisions found before they are load-bearing.
- Multi-cloud consolidation. Including the accounts nobody listed, which are reliably the ones that matter.
- An honest read on the org chart. Where the acquired security function reports, and whether that survives integration.
- Executive reporting. The integration status in a form a board and an investment committee can act on.
- A sequenced blueprint. With the blocking items named up front, while they are still schedule items rather than surprises.
How it runs
A repeatable version of a $69B games-industry integration — the Zero Trust architecture behind it across 35 studios and 100,000+ endpoints, stalled four years before it was picked up and delivered in eighteen months.
What this isn't
Not the diligence itself. This starts at or after close. If you are pre-signing and want the security read before you commit, that is a different and much shorter conversation — still worth the thirty minutes.