Overlooked cyber and compliance risks in Private Equity1 min read

With cyber attacks becoming increasingly common, private equity firms need to seriously consider the business implications of cyber threats. The severity and methods of cyber attacks are constantly evolving, often leaving businesses scrambling to secure their operations.

In particular, private equity firms are conspicuous targets, as they deal with large amounts of assets and process and store large amounts of sensitive deal data. Without strong cyber security measures in place, firms risk not only losing this valuable data, but also the valuation of their assets and positive reputation.

Cyber attacks often originate within an organisation’s third-party ecosystem. Therefore, private equity firms must ensure that their portfolio companies are secure through a comprehensive due diligence process during onboarding, subsequently monitoring them to establish ongoing cyber security and compliance. This maintains the security posture of the assets and allows firms to deal with developing threats proactively. Firms can also ensure their own cyber security within their vendor ecosystem with this process.

Though this can all seem overwhelming, there is a solution that allows private equity firms to manage the cyber security and compliance status of their portfolio companies while also securing their own organisation. CyDesk provides real-time insights to continuously assess cyber risk across organisations and departments, identifying critical vulnerabilities, analysing them within the context of business operations and managing them for business assurance.

Understanding the significance of changing risks bolsters a firm’s management strategy, as they can make fully informed decisions about their liabilities with consideration to the impact on the valuation of their assets. Using CyDesk, private equity firms will enhance their cyber resilience, creating a key differentiator that will drive value for their limited partners.