Case Study: Support for a $7.5 Billion M&A Transaction

08 March 2023

By NCC Group

Situation

NCC Group was enlisted as a cyber security due diligence partner for an organization undertaking one of the largest technology deals of the decade. The goal of the client was to understand the cyber resilience of the target organization and to ensure that they weren’t buying into a potential breach.

NCC Group conducted a comprehensive review of the target organization and identified a number of issues that resulted in contractual terms dependent on their resolution.

 

At a Glance

Organization: International Technology Organization

Industry: Tech

Challenge: Understand the security resilience of a target organization in an M&A deal

Solution: Full range of cyber activities to understand resilience, including compliance assessment and cyber defense operations

Result: NCC Group identified a number of issues resulting in contractual terms dependent on their resolution

Challenge

Before one of the largest technology deals of the decade closed, NCC Group was enlisted as the cyber security due diligence partner in order to ensure that the cyber resilience of the target organization would not pose any potential vulnerabilities.

The goal of the client was to gain an understanding of the resilience of the target organization for the deal. This covered a broad range of resilience topics, including:

  • Global privacy legislation compliance
  • The security defects present in their software
  • The operational resilience of a service used by 31 million users

With the pre-close portion of the assessment being delivered within six weeks from London and San Francisco, the number one question for the client was: “Are we buying into a breach?”

Solution

NCC Group’s assessment team of over 30 consultants spanned the full range of cyber activities, including:

  • Privacy legislation compliance assessment
  • Risk management and control gap analysis
  • Technical vulnerability
  • Cyber defense operations

During the course of the project, NCC Group delivered a threat hunt activity (latent hack discovery) across significant volumes of data (many terabytes) in order to provide assurance as to the integrity of the service.

Result

NCC Group successfully delivered the project, identifying a number of issues resulting in contractual terms dependent on their resolution. We briefed external and internal councils as well as the executive responsible for the deal, and has subsequently been retained by both parties.

NCC Group

NCC Group

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