Dealing With IT Compliance Challenges in Mergers & Acquisitions
In general, mergers and acquisitions are the result of expansion of a new range of services, or entering into new markets. However, during the recent economic recession, enterprises were forced to merge because there was a desperate need to boost revenue and cut costs. While companies usually benefit from these mergers, IT departments within these companies face formidable challenges while trying to integrate individual companies and making them a cohesive and consolidated entity.
Mergers and acquisitions may incapacitate the security of organizations in cases where disgruntled employees and inconsistent policies add to the prevailing disorder. And one of the biggest risks in mergers and acquisitions is the messaging system. For example, email messages are an integral part of every business process, and negligence in using these electronic messaging systems can cost the company a heavy price exposing it to high security risks. Therefore it is extremely important to have a well-defined management process for identifying and providing access to the right users.
While this in itself is an enormous challenge, IT departments also have to ensure that security and compliance standards are maintained throughout the process of authorization and control, auditing as well as reporting. Moreover, it is quite possible that the two individual organizations may have varying business processes, goals, technology platforms, and organizational culture. Hence, a transparent perspective with regard to control of the IT environment can help avoid regulatory violations.
However, in order to address all security and compliance related issues, organizations need to ensure the following:
- Employ solutions that foster communication between different systems and applications and allow the integration of different frameworks
- Deploy an automated process to handle resources on a centralized platform in a unified and comprehensive manner. This helps reduce the time and effort wasted in repetitive tasks
- Use the best IT solution for handling processes and technology efficiently thereby reducing all wasteful expenditure
- Execute solutions that take care of all governance, risk and compliance needs and employ best practices for risk assessment and IT risk management
- Use a capable audit tracking system to monitor compliance levels and provide reports for log analysis on demand.
- Maintain a regular auditing schedule to check for irregularities, and close security gaps
A successful merger or acquisition would mean bringing together two business units into one with solutions that integrate people, processes, technology and policies. And only an efficient compliance solution can enable this. Moreover, compliance management software offers great potential for effective maintenance of compliance with stringent security regulations, while also empowering organizations with compelling security metrics. It has distinctive features to foresee vulnerabilities and risks, and to keep organizations completely secure. With its identity and access management capabilities, compliance software can also ensure a thorough investigation of protocols.
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