In the process of merger & acquisition sensitive company data is transferred between entities from financial to intellectual property. Merger & acquisition involves months of due diligence, organizational strategies, back & forth negotiations. A lot of times the planned deal falls apart & are sent back to drawing board. The buyer here has seen a lot of sensitive proprietary information during the merger & acquisition process. The seller has to make sure that the buyer does not have access to the spread sheets, financial statements & other sensitive information that was all part of the due diligence process. Data security here is a problem for both the buyer & the seller. Therefore, the risk of data leaks must be mitigated immediately by both the entities especially if they deal has reached to the point where a vast amount of sensitive data has been exchanged by the entities.
Before the due diligence process has taken places everyone has to sign the non-disclosure agreement which helps mitigate the risks regarding leak of companies sensitive data. However they still have the access to this sensitive data & its better to eliminate their access as quickly as possible for security reasons.
Virtual data room (VDR) are now used by every firm for merger & acquisition as it provides robust security & permission certifications, only authorised individuals have access which can be then easily taken away too when required with just few clicks.
Before virtual deal room (VDR) were used this was a manual process. Gathering & destroying all the documents was done manually with hand which was very time consuming. The activity of destroying the documents was reinforced only on the basis of trust & legal agreements indicating that access to companies sensitive documents has been eliminated. Now, thanks secure Virtual data rooms you can revoke rights quickly, ensuring documents instantly vanish for the party who previously had access. The safety and efficiency this tool provides after a deal crumbles can’t be overstated. In addition to this rapid revocation, secure deal data rooms support the electronic destruction of data, protecting individual downloaded documents containing sensitive information from unauthorized access. Once VDR access is revoked, so is the party’s access to any documents – even ones that were previously downloaded are protected in an VDR environment.
The controlled access tools provided within an enterprise-grade secure Virtual Data Room like DocullyVDR quickly becomes the seller’s friend, providing several immediate mitigation advantages, including:
- Resource monitoring and auditing: Secure data room provides the ultimate document control by allowing you to choose to have all documents viewable only on-screen, leaving no stray print-outs or downloads to worry about. Once the deal is dead, you can revoke those permissions immediately, and former potential buyers have no workaround for post-deal access.
- Robust document security: If you do want to allow a little more document access than just on-screen viewing, controlled access allows the seller’s administrators to establish strict admission privileges on a person-by-person basis. This includes limited print capabilities; on-screen watermarking to prevent image or video captures; accurate tracking of access and usage time; and restriction of file transfers, downloading or copying. If the buyer needs to print something out, their activity is tracked within the VDR, so you know what documents may be unsecured and need to be destroyed.
- Flexible, multi-tiered document access: Not everyone needs to know everything at all times. As certain stages in the deal are met, additional information can be shared by the seller. You don’t have to put everything on the table all at once, and you have ultimate control every step of the way.Should your deal dissolve, you know what documents have been held back and which have been shared, even if they have already been loaded. Ultimately, the legal contracts, NDAs and other agreements must govern anything that has been printed or downloaded or whatever remains in the heads of the buyers. However, with the immediate permissioning (and un-permissioning) capabilities of a robust, purpose-built secure virtual data room , you can begin to protect your shared assets as soon as a deal falters.
The DocullyVDR team is a provider of a new generation secure data sharing platform designed for businesses. The team has extensive experience in working with document sharing platforms and has been assisting the Virtual Data Room community since 2019 by providing users with free information.