Merger and Acquisition PAM Checklist: 7-Day Playbook for CISOs

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are where strategy meets speed. They can double market share, expand capabilities overnight, and fuel long-term growth. But they also expose the acquiring company to unprecedented cybersecurity risk, especially when it comes to privileged access.

The moment the deal closes, attackers see opportunity:

• Dormant admin accounts
• Misaligned access policies
• Orphaned service accounts
• Inconsistent PAM adoption

And the most common question CISOs ask?

“How do we bring this new company under our control without creating back doors that attackers can exploit?”

This guide is your merger and acquisition security checklist, a 7-day playbook for securing privileged access during M&A. It’s built on lessons from enterprise CISOs, industry best practices, and what we see every day at StrongDM.

Why M&A Access Integration Is So Risky

M&A deals force two companies with different cultures, technologies, and security maturity levels to suddenly act as one.

Top privileged access challenges during M&A

1. Speed vs. security conflict
   • The business wants access enabled immediately so integration can begin.
   • The security team knows missteps create compliance violations or breach risks.
2. Technology mismatch
   • One company might use legacy PAM on-prem, while the other uses AWS-native IAM.
   • PAM solutions don’t extend easily across different infrastructures.
3. Licensing constraints
   • Adding hundreds of privileged users often requires new contracts, leading to bottlenecks or risky license purges.
4. Standing privilege everywhere
   • Shared admin accounts, rarely rotated service accounts, and hard-coded secrets are the norm.
5. Cloud vs. on-prem disconnects
   • Acquisitions often accelerate cloud migration. Legacy PAM is rarely SaaS-native.
6. Cultural resistance
   • Engineers and admins in the acquired org are wary of new restrictions, making adoption difficult.

Why Traditional PAM Tools Struggle in M&A

Most PAM solutions were built for a single enterprise directory with stable infrastructure. M&A breaks those assumptions.

1. Dependency on Domain Trusts

• Setting up an AD forest or domain trusts is slow and risky.
• Misconfigurations create lateral movement opportunities for attackers.
• Many acquired orgs don’t want (or can’t) establish a trust quickly.

2. License & Infrastructure Heavy

• On-prem vaults require servers, agents, and careful scaling.
• Expansion during M&A often means parallel upgrades.

3. Poor Adoption

• PAM portals feel clunky. Engineers bypass them by caching creds or creating shadow accounts.

4. Audit vs. Reality

• Organizations pass audits with “green checkboxes” but lack real-time visibility.

Your 7-Day M&A PAM Playbook (Checklist)

Here’s the day-by-day plan for wrapping an acquisition in secure access controls quickly without trusts or months-long projects.

Day 1–2: Discover & Prioritize

Key tasks:

• Inventory critical systems: AD controllers, Linux/Windows servers, databases, Kubernetes clusters, cloud accounts.
• Identify keys to the kingdom (root/admin, DBA, network engineers).
• Flag standing privileged accounts and orphaned service accounts.
• Assess current PAM maturity: what’s deployed, adoption rate, and gaps.

Outputs:

• A ranked list of high-value assets and users.
• Risk map showing where unmanaged access exists.

Day 3: Deploy SaaS-Based Access Control

Instead of extending a vault, deploy cloud-native access brokering that:

• Doesn’t require a domain trust.
• Connects users via IdP login (Okta, Azure AD, Ping).
• Brokers connections at the protocol level (SSH, RDP, SQL, NoSQL, Kubernetes, etc.).
• Issues ephemeral credentials invisible to end users.

With StrongDM, this is typically set up in hours, not weeks.

Day 4–5: Enforce Just-In-Time (JIT) Privilege

Replace standing privilege with ephemeral access:

• Engineers request elevation.
• Privilege is granted for a fixed time (e.g., 1 hour).
• All actions are logged and auditable.

Benefits:

• No dormant accounts waiting to be abused.
• Reduced risk of insider misuse.
• Aligns with Zero Trust security principles.

Day 6: Automate Identity Lifecycle (JML)

Link PAM with your identity governance and administration (IGA) tools.

• Joiners: auto-provisioned with least privilege.
• Movers: roles and access rights updated automatically.
• Leavers: privileges revoked instantly (no ghost accounts).

This step ensures compliance with frameworks like SOX, HIPAA, and NIS2, which demand strict deprovisioning.

Day 7: Enable Monitoring & Audit

Turn on full visibility before the first week ends.

• Session replay and keystroke logging.
• SIEM integration (Splunk, Datadog, Elastic, Chronicle).
• Real-time alerting on suspicious access.

Now, you have audit-ready reporting for the board, regulators, and the CISO.

Merger and Acquisition Security Case Studies

Seismic’s Case Study: Rapid M&A-style Scaling with Multi-Cloud Integration

Seismic, a global enablement platform, faced the challenge of consolidating infrastructure and access across acquisitions spanning AWS, GCP, Azure, and IBM Cloud. Each environment came with its own access tools, making unified control cumbersome and error-prone.

Problem: Fragmented permissions, slow provisioning (days), and lack of scalable least-privilege enforcement.

Solution with StrongDM:

• Unified access portal for all cloud environments.
• Automated Just-in-Time access workflows, dramatically speeding up provisioning.
• Comprehensive audit and session logging, enabling SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance.

Seismic reports that provisioning went from days to minutes, and its Principal SRE stressed:

“Getting us to a place where we could have Just-in-Time, Least Privileged Access made all the difference. We really couldn’t do it without a solution like StrongDM.” (read full story)

Why this works in an M&A context:

• StrongDM allowed rapid, secure access consolidation across newly acquired infrastructures without domain trusts.
• The centralized, just-in-time model reduced standing privilege and aligned access with security and audit requirements.

Learn more about this case study.

Bullhorn’s Case Study: Bullhorn Replaces Legacy PAM to Enable Seamless Integration

Bullhorn, a global leader in staffing and recruiting software, needed a modern alternative to its legacy PAM system. The old solution was brittle, required manual workarounds, and even caused planned outages during weekends for access maintenance. In fast-moving environments and especially in acquisition scenarios, that level of fragility was unacceptable.

Problem:

• Legacy PAM created friction and resistance among engineers.
• PAM upgrades required downtime and manual intervention, slowing down business operations.
• Scaling access across multiple business units was difficult, limiting agility during M&A-style growth.

Solution with StrongDM:

• StrongDM deployed first as a POC (proof of concept), then moved directly into production with zero disruption.
• Access provisioning shifted from days to minutes across Bullhorn’s hybrid infrastructure.
• Engineers adopted the system quickly, as access was simpler, faster, and less intrusive.

Bullhorn’s Infrastructure Security Architect emphasized:

“From POC to production, the transition was seamless… the proof of concept environment was transitioned into our production environment so seamlessly, it actually became our production environment.” (read full story)

Why this works in an M&A context:

• Acquisitions often bring legacy PAM debt and brittle systems. StrongDM replaces these quickly without downtime.
• The seamless adoption curve minimizes resistance from engineers in newly acquired orgs.
• StrongDM’s SaaS-based model provides scalability across multiple teams and regions, which is critical when folding in new infrastructure after an acquisition.

Learn more about this case study.

Best Practices for PAM in M&A

1. Assume Zero Trust from Day One
   • Don’t assume acquired users or systems are trustworthy.
   • Require MFA and identity verification for all privileged actions.
2. Eliminate Standing Privilege
   • Standing accounts are breach multipliers. Replace with JIT.
3. Unify Identity & Access
   • Tie PAM into your IdP and IGA stack to close Joiner/Mover/Leaver gaps.
4. Focus on Adoption
   • If engineers hate the tool, they’ll bypass it. Pick a PAM solution designed for usability.
5. Automate Everything Possible
   • Access approvals, session revocation, logging, and deprovisioning should all be automated.

Final Checklist: Secure an Acquisition in 7 Days

✔ Inventory assets & privileged accounts
✔ Deploy SaaS-based brokering (no trusts)
✔ Replace standing privilege with JIT
✔ Automate JML workflows
✔ Stream audit logs into SIEM
✔ Eliminate service account sprawl

StrongDM: Built for M&A Speed

StrongDM enables acquiring organizations to secure privileged access in days, not quarters:

• No domain trusts required
• Credential-less access to servers, databases, and cloud consoles
• Ephemeral credentials & JIT privilege by default
• Universal coverage: Windows, Linux, DBs, Kubernetes, cloud providers
• Global performance: low-latency relays across regions
• Full visibility: replay every session, stream into SIEMs

M&A doesn’t need to leave you exposed. With the right PAM approach, you can integrate securely, demonstrate compliance, and keep business moving fast. Book a Business Value Assessment to see how StrongDM can wrap new acquisitions in secure access in record time.