The Importance of Security Scans During Mergers and Acquisitions
In today's digital age, mergers and acquisitions have become increasingly common. While these business deals can be beneficial to all parties involved, they can also present significant risks if not executed properly. One area of concern that must never be overlooked is cybersecurity.
In order to ensure the safety and security of both companies during a merger or acquisition, security scans are an essential tool. A security scan is essentially a process of testing a company's existing security measures to identify vulnerabilities that might otherwise go unnoticed. During a merger or acquisition, it's important to have a comprehensive understanding of each company's security posture. This can be achieved through a series of scans that aim to identify potential risks and vulnerabilities in the IT infrastructure. Once identified, these risks can be remedied through a variety of security measures – from simple software updates to more complex network reconfigurations.
A security scan can be tailored to the unique needs of each company, taking into account the specific software, hardware and network configurations in use. However, it is important to note that a company should never rely solely on security scans. While they are an important tool in the fight against cyber-attacks, they are not a panacea. Companies must continually update and improve their cybersecurity measures to stay one step ahead of evolving threats. In conclusion, security scans are an essential tool for companies going through a merger or acquisition. They provide a comprehensive overview of each company's security posture, allowing for the identification of potential risks and vulnerabilities that might otherwise go unnoticed.
But just scanning for vulnerabilities is not enough, you have to fix each vulnerability to improve the security posture. So you need careful planning of activities and capacity for scanning and fixing the issues.
In acquisitions, security scans are often carried out on request of the acquiring company. If the time between sign and close of a deal is not sufficient to fix the issues, what do you do? Do you disconnect the target from the internet? Certainly not. You have to find a way to harden the security of the target while you are fixing the issues. I will share how to do that in one of my following blog entries.
NEW Extended and updated second Edition of Best Practices for commercial use of open source software: Business models, processes and tools for managing open source software ISBN 9783750403093
This book enables you to leverage the state-of-the-art of creating open source based business models and of managing open source in the development cycle of commercial software and during due diligence in mergers and acquisitions. In addition, it provides information about why investments in open source makes sense.
The book has been reviewed, extended, amended and now contains two brand new chapters, one by Joseph Jacks from OSS Capital, a fund focused on investing in commercial open source companies, provides fundamentals of the open source business by elaborating on value creation and value capture for commercial open source companies. The other one is by Snyk and focuses on development aspects of using open source software as part of commercial products. The book is available with the ISBN 9783750403093. BUY ON AMAZON
Practitioners, investors and consultants created this book to help professionals in the software business like investors, executives, business developers, product managers, architects, developers, quality managers, development operations managers as well as students to get acquainted and proficient in using open source products in a commercial context.
First, the focus is on business model impact of open source products and open source licenses. Dr. Karl Michael Popp gives an overview of the different types of business models for open source companies. Dr. Josef Waltl shows how open source licenses and intellectual property strategies can create a unique business model based on a combination of open source and proprietary software.
Then, the focus is on detection and license compliance aspects of open source software in mergers and acquisitions. The acquisition of a software vendor requires the review of intellectual property rights including open source license compliance as described by Dr. Karl Michael Popp.
The following new chapter, authored by Joseph Jacks from OSS Capital, provides fundamentals of the open source business by elaborating on value creation and value capture for commercial open source companies.
Then, two chapters cover the offerings of tool vendors for governance of open source software but also for development enablement. First, Bill Weinberg and Greg Olsen show the broad offering of solutions of Black Duck Software, a provider for open source governance and enablement tools.
The next, new chapter, provided by Snyk, focuses on development aspects of using open source software as part of commercial products like assistance for developers in selection and in continuously updating open source components during the software development lifecycle.