Companies that are merging with another legal entity, acquiring an organization, or divesting of a business face one of the most complex operational and technological transactions they will likely encounter in the corporate lifecycle.
While organizations are attracted to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for various reasons — from expanding influence, market presence, diversifying portfolios, and gaining a competitive advantage that catapults business growth, but all the financial benefits in the world can’t make up for a haphazard M&A plan.
With rising regulatory scrutiny, evolving data privacy laws, and growing cyber threats, mishandling sensitive information during M&A can lead to costly breaches, reputational damage, and compliance violations.
In fact, according to PwC, nearly 60% of companies experience a data security incident during the M&A process, and Deloitte reports that over half of executives cite data privacy and security as top deal-breakers in due diligence. That means securing your data is not just a compliance issue, but it’s a deal-critical imperative.
A data-centric M&A strategy ensures smooth integration, mitigates risk, and maximizes value from the transaction. Below are six essential steps to secure your data throughout the M&A lifecycle and how BigID can help every step of the way.
1. Discover and Catalog All Data — Everywhere
The Challenge: M&A can instantly multiply the volume, complexity, and sensitivity of data. Without full visibility, critical information can remain hidden, duplicated, or unsecured. It’s critical to find and catalog new data, identify data by its purpose, discover dark data, and identify crown jewel data for a successful M&A initiative.
The Solution: BigID automatically discovers and catalogs all data, whether structured, unstructured, semi-structured, in the cloud, on-premises, or in motion at petabyte scale. Identify “crown jewel” data, uncover dark data, and build a unified data inventory to guide risk-based integration decisions.
2. Leverage AI & ML-Based Classification
The Challenge: When merging data, organizations must clearly understand what customer information they hold, the reasons for having it, and the lawful purposes it serves. Traditional classification tools miss context, relationships, and hidden sensitive data, which puts compliance and security at risk.
The Solution: Using machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and advanced artificial intelligence (AI), BigID applies intelligent classification to regulated and sensitive data by type, purpose, policy, location, and risk level. This deep classification ensures comprehensive visibility, accurate handling, reporting, and protection across the combined data environment.
3. Clean Up and Minimize Data
The Challenge: Not all data holds equal value—information once critical to running a business before a merger can quickly turn into a liability after integration. Duplicate, redundant, and unnecessary data amplifies the risk of data breach, inflates storage costs, complicates migration strategies, and often violates privacy regulations.
The Solution: BigID automatically detects and remediates duplicate, near-duplicate, and derivative data by applying policy-driven retention rules, automating deletion workflows, and enforcing data minimization for risk reduction, compliance, and cost savings.
4. Mitigate Risk with Data Quality
The Challenge: Managing data from a host of different sources, especially across different organizations with various inconsistencies and inaccuracies, poses a risk, increasing unnecessary exposure of sensitive and vulnerable data. Poor-quality data introduces operational inefficiencies and undermines trust in post-merger decision-making.
The Solution with BigID: BigID’s Business Glossary creates a unified, consistent language around risk and aligns business terms with underlying metadata across merged entities, ensuring consistent and accurate data quality to reduce the risk of errors, misreporting, or compliance gaps. With BigID, organizations can accelerate due diligence, reduce misinterpretation during integration, and help identify redundant, sensitive, or high-risk data.
5. Manage New (and Old) User Consents
The Challenge: Consent agreements from the acquired company may differ in scope and requirements, which may impact future data use. It’s not always clear what language or agreements the customers or users of the company being acquired have agreed to. Some things to consider may be:
- Is there a promise in the privacy policy to notify users in the event of a sale?
- Do the terms and conditions grant users specific rights?
- Have users consented to (or opted out) of certain data processing activities?
The Solution: BigID centralizes and tracks all historical and new user consent agreements and records. BigID maintains a record of user preferences, opt-ins, and opt-outs, ensuring that all data processing aligns with promises made in privacy notices and contractual agreements to meet compliance requirements.
6. Achieve and Maintain Regulatory Compliance
The Challenge: M&A often spans multiple jurisdictions, each with its own privacy, security, and industry-specific regulations. From the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) to the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — as well as industry-specific regulations like SOX, GLBA, and HIPAA — companies face a growing number of compliance requirements for ensuring that sensitive, personal, financial, and health data are safeguarded during the migration.
The Solution: BigID inventories regulated data, maps data flows, automates DSARs, maintains Records of Processing Activities (RoPAs), tracks cross-border transfers, and manages third-party data sharing, which streamlines compliance with GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, SOX, and more.
Why a Data-Centric M&A Strategy Matters
Modern M&A isn’t just about financial synergy — it’s about data synergy. With BigID, organizations can bring together two (or more) complex data ecosystems with confidence, speed, and security. By making data visibility, governance, and compliance the foundation of the integration process, companies can protect value, reduce risk, and accelerate post-merger success.
Book a Demo to see how BigID can accelerate your M&A transition.
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