Due Diligence
In cybersecurity, Due Diligence refers to the comprehensive and systematic investigation performed on a target organization (e.g., a company being acquired, a potential partner, a critical vendor) before entering into a significant business agreement. The primary objective of cybersecurity due diligence is to assess the target's security posture, identify vulnerabilities, uncover hidden risks, evaluate their compliance adherence, and determine any potential cybersecurity liabilities that could impact the acquiring or partnering entity. This rigorous process enables informed decision-making, accurate risk quantification, and effective planning for post-deal security integration.
ThreatNG significantly enhances cybersecurity due diligence by providing a rapid, objective, and continuously updated external "cyber health check" of the target organization. It offers an attacker's view of their digital footprint, revealing potential liabilities and integration challenges that traditional, internally focused assessments might miss.
ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery without needing connectors. This is crucial for due diligence, as it rapidly identifies the target's external-facing digital assets, including those they might be unaware of, mimicking an adversary's reconnaissance.
Example: ThreatNG can quickly map all public-facing IPs, domains, subdomains, and associated web applications belonging to the target company. This might uncover forgotten staging servers, old development sites, or misconfigured cloud instances not listed in the target's internal asset inventory, revealing potential acquisition liabilities.
ThreatNG quantifies the target's external cyber risk posture through various assessments, providing verifiable data for due diligence:
Cyber Risk Exposure: Provides an overall risk score for the target. ThreatNG can assess the target's "overall cyber risk exposure," indicating the potential security debt or critical vulnerabilities being acquired.
Data Leak Susceptibility: Assesses the risk of sensitive data exposure. ThreatNG can evaluate the target's "Data Leak Susceptibility" by finding inadvertently exposed credentials (e.g., in public code repositories) or sensitive files in misconfigured public cloud storage, highlighting immediate data privacy risks.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: Identifies the likelihood of a significant incident. ThreatNG can determine the target's "Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility" based on their external attack surface and dark web presence (e.g., tracking ransomware gang activity mentions related to the target), indicating if the acquisition brings a high-risk profile.
Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure: This is crucial for assessing the target's own vendors. ThreatNG can evaluate the target's "Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure," highlighting risks introduced by their critical third parties (which will become Nth parties post-acquisition).
Brand Damage Susceptibility: ThreatNG can assess the target's "Brand Damage Susceptibility" by monitoring existing brand impersonations, negative news, or relevant ESG violations, indicating potential reputational liabilities that could impact the acquiring entity.
3. Reporting:
ThreatNG provides clear, actionable reports essential for M&A teams and decision-makers during due diligence:
Prioritized Report: Can highlight critical external vulnerabilities or hidden assets of the target company as high-priority risks, allowing dealmakers to factor these into valuation, deal terms, or post-acquisition integration plans.
Security Ratings Report: This report provides an objective, high-level security score for the target, offering a quick, independent assessment of its external security posture. ThreatNG can also show a U.S. SEC Filings report (via DarCache 8K) for publicly traded targets, providing additional financial risk context.
ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings. This extends due diligence beyond a static snapshot, providing ongoing risk validation.
Example: After the initial due diligence scan, ThreatNG can continuously monitor the target's external posture up to the closing date, ensuring no new critical vulnerabilities emerge or existing ones worsen, which could derail the deal or become an immediate post-acquisition issue.
ThreatNG's investigation modules allow deep dives into specific external risk areas of the target organization:
Sensitive Code Exposure: Pinpoints hardcoded credentials, API keys, or proprietary code exposed in the target's public repositories, representing significant intellectual property leakage or potential unauthorized access points.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Identifies the target's sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services and SaaS applications, assessing for misconfigurations (e.g., open cloud buckets) or insecure API endpoints. This is vital for understanding their cloud footprint and potential data liabilities.
Dark Web Presence: Monitors for mentions of the target company, associated ransomware events, or compromised credentials on the dark web, indicating existing or imminent breaches that could impact the acquisition.
6. Intelligence Repositories (DarCache):
ThreatNG's DarCache provides comprehensive external context and threat intelligence to inform the risk assessment:
DarCache Vulnerability (NVD, EPSS, KEV, PoC Exploits): Informs on the real-world exploitability and likelihood of vulnerabilities found on the target's external assets. If ThreatNG identifies a KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerability) on a target's system, it flags a known, actively exploited weakness that needs immediate attention.
DarCache 8K: For publicly traded targets, provides context from their SEC Form 8-Ks, revealing publicly declared cybersecurity incidents or other material events influencing their risk profile.
Complementary Solutions:
ThreatNG's external insights create powerful synergies with other due diligence tools and processes:
M&A Due Diligence Platforms: ThreatNG's objective is to provide external cybersecurity assessment data that can be directly integrated into specialized M&A due diligence platforms, providing a critical cybersecurity risk component to the overall deal assessment.
GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) Platforms: ThreatNG's findings on the target's external compliance gaps (e.g., exposed PII in misconfigured cloud storage, lack of proper email authentication) can be fed into GRC systems to inform post-acquisition compliance remediation plans.
Cyber Insurance Underwriters: ThreatNG's detailed security ratings and vulnerability insights for a target company can be leveraged by cyber insurance providers to assess risk more accurately and potentially adjust policy terms before or after an acquisition, leading to better-informed underwriting decisions.
