A merger is a published schedule of when an organization will have the hardest time telling its own people apart. Almost immediately, your helpdesk starts taking calls from employees it has no way to recognize. They now work for your company, but they aren’t in your directory yet, or they’re in a second directory scheduled to merge in six months. For now, they’re locked out, their authenticator is gone, and they need access.
Your agents start to verify them with the tools they have available: employee ID, manager's name, date of birth, maybe the last four digits of a Social Security number. But every one of those facts is known by an attacker who read the acquisition news.
Identity assurance is critical to Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) because bad actors know that they can exploit the confusion to slip in unnoticed. For both the acquiring and the acquired IT and security teams, it’s critical to close this gap before it gets exploited.
The Role of Identity Assurance in M&A
Identity assurance is critical during Mergers & Acquisitions activities because merging IT environments creates numerous new cost centers as well as new opportunities for threat actors.
- A flood of new users, many unknown to your IT department, must be added to and maintained within all of your identity and authentication providers.
- Multiple directories may exist simultaneously for weeks or months, increasing the risk of overlooked permissions, duplicate accounts, and fraudulent access.
- IT support teams are overwhelmed with onboarding issues, password resets, and account recovery requests from employees they’ve never met.
- Threat actors know that this creates an opportunity for them to socially engineer their way into your systems by impersonating your employees.
The Benefits of Identity Assurance in M&A
1. Uncover Imposters
M&A means a massive influx of identities entering your network. Running a verification campaign through Nametag tells you exactly which person is behind each account, and helps you identify potential imposters in anyone who doesn’t complete verification.
2. Streamline IT Operations
IT teams are stretched thin during a merger. Nametag eliminates bottlenecks, reduces downtime, and improves efficiency, freeing up IT resources and staff to help support due diligence and other M&A activities instead of handling routine password resets.
3. Prevent Breaches
During M&A, a single stolen account can potentially derail the deal. Nametag prevents bad actors from impersonating your employees at critical moments, using patented technology to ensure the person acting isn’t just a real person, but the right person.
4. Ease the Transition
M&As often involve transitioning from disparate identity providers to a unified system. Nametag works across all of your identity providers simultaneously, ensuring no gaps in account protection and user experience during the transition.
How Nametag Streamlines and Protects M&A
Nametag is a workforce identity assurance platform that reduces the costs associated with IT integration and protects your organization during M&A. Our complete solutions embed workforce-grade identity assurance directly into your systems and workflows:
- Employee Onboarding. Verify the acquired company's employees before they claim their directory accounts. Credential issuance is gated by a successful verification, and the new employee retrieves their own credentials. Nothing is emailed, read over the phone, or relayed through a busy manager.
- Helpdesk Verification. When a new ticket comes in, agents can send a verification request with just a few clicks. Auditable identity assurance replaces security questions and judgment calls, preventing social engineering attacks while creating a better experience for both the agent and the employee.
- Self-service account recovery. A branded microsite lets employees reset their passwords and MFA, unlock their accounts, or receive a temporary access pass without opening a support ticket. Group-based permissioning controls allow you to scope newly acquired users differently from your existing workforce.
- Step-up Authentication. Require a verified human before privileged actions during the integration window: administrative escalation, directory configuration changes, and payment approvals. Every authentication produces an auditable record linking the verified person to the specific action they authorized.
Conclusion
M&A processes are an opportune time for threat actors to worm their way in. Nametag ensures that every user in your environment is really who they claim to be and helps reduce costs for IT teams by redirecting more user requests to secure self-service.
By streamlining IT operations and fortifying security, Nametag accelerates M&A integrations, prevents costly disruptions, and protects your organization from social engineering and account takeovers during and after the transition. During this critical time of change, Nametag ensures peace of mind: that every user can be trusted, their accounts are secure, and employees have the access they need to stay productive.
“Employee onboarding is a gap in IT security that nobody has been able to figure out—except Nametag. This has transformed our employee onboarding experience.” – Senior IT Director, Publicly-Traded Biotechnology Company
Want to learn more? Get in touch to discuss the challenges you face in M&A security.
