The Cybersecurity Challenge in Mergers and Acquisitions

**Executive summary:** This report analyzes cyber risks tied to mergers and acquisitions, showing that M&A windows create heightened exposure to data leaks, ransomware and inherited malware, policy/compliance failures, logging blind spots, and tool-integration issues; it includes forum evidence of threat actors monetizing M&A intelligence, sector trends (manufacturing most affected), multiple customer case studies, and targeted recommendations for pre-due-diligence assessments, unified logging and detection, network segmentation, and coordinated incident response.