Cybersecurity Due Diligence in M&A Processes

Cybersecurity due diligence seeks to answer a concrete question before closing an M&A deal: whether the target company hides security liabilities that could translate into economic or legal losses after the purchase. This includes reviewing its incident history, regulatory compliance, network architecture, third-party contracts and the maturity of its vulnerability management practices, ideally with limited but direct access to technical evidence and not just questionnaires answered by the seller. Its practical importance lies in the fact that a serious finding can adjust the transaction price, make closing conditional on prior remediation or even cancel the deal. A recurring case is discovering, well into the process, that the target company suffered an undisclosed data breach, which forces renegotiating terms and planning regulatory notifications before integrating systems.