Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) enable companies to grow, gain new technology, and stay competitive, offering opportunities for increased revenue. Swift employee onboarding is crucial for immediate productivity to maximize return-on-investment (ROI). However, M&As pose logistical complexities due to managing diverse technology stacks and introducing unmanaged devices.
Traditional security methods like shipping laptops and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) are inadequate for quickly providing secure access to new employees. A key objective in M&As is to rapidly and securely onboard many users and devices while safeguarding corporate data and applications, ensuring new employees can become productive without delay. Prisma® Access Browser enables M&As to achieve this key objective, delivering secure access on any device and enabling employees to become productive immediately.
Delivering Secure Access Quickly Is Crucial to Maximizing Time-to-Value
The speed of onboarding newly acquired employees determines how quickly they can be productive. Without secure access to business-critical applications, data and resources, newly acquired employee productivity is greatly diminished. This increases time-to-value, which in turn lowers ROI.
On the other hand, current employees need quick access to resources and data from the acquiree. Without granular access controls or advanced security features, security and data leakage risks increase while productivity decreases.
Differences in technology stacks, effective implementation of granular access controls, the large number of employees who need access, and overcoming learning curves can make quickly onboarding a challenging task, undermining employee productivity.
Security Cannot Be Sacrificed for Speed, Either
M&As involve merging different technology stacks, transferring vast amounts of data, and consolidating newly acquired employees and current company employees onto a single system.
This transition widens the security gap as organizations face heightened data loss risk from insider risk and the vast number of acquired, unmanaged devices as well as modern cyberthreats. During M&As, organizations need to:
- Protect sensitive data, including financial information, intellectual property and personally identifiable information (PII).
- Apply security policies consistently across newly integrated teams, including employees across different regions using unmanaged devices.
- Defend against modern cyberthreats, including AI-generated phishing attacks and advanced malware that targets the workspace.
Current Solutions for Delivering Secure Access during M&As Are Not Enough
Historically, organizations have relied on several solutions to increase employee onboarding speed and enable faster productivity. However, these methods have significant limitations.
Shipping Laptops
Shipping laptops is a popular method of enabling new employees during M&As. However, shipping laptops lacks the speed necessary to maximize time-to-value.
The process of shipping laptops is incredibly costly and time-consuming. It involves assessing, procuring, provisioning and distributing the technology and devices to be used by employees.
Even after all of this, employees often need IT assistance to perform final device onboarding and setup on identity providers. This entire process takes upwards of weeks, and employee productivity and ROI are heavily diminished during it.
VDI
VDI is another traditional approach that relies on running a traditional desktop workload on a centralized server. It enables users to access work desktops remotely from any device.
While it is a faster alternative compared to shipping laptops, VDI still falls short due to:
- High Cost: VDI is expensive because it requires adding compute, storage and networking resources. Infrastructure, software and licensing costs are also substantial.
- Difficult to Scale and Maintain: Extensive maintenance, including patch management and hardware upgrades, is required. Scaling is also difficult and requires significant resources.
- Frustrating User Experience: The rigid structure of the VDI environment leads to latency, performance bottlenecks and long login times. Poor user experience can lead to users attempting workarounds.
- Security Blindspots: VDI solutions do not provide granular visibility into user actions in web apps or last-mile data protection capabilities. They also do not offer least-privileged access control or insider threat protection.
Organizations need better methods of securely connecting their newly acquired employees to business-critical resources without sacrificing speed or security.
Prisma Access Browser: A Modern Solution to Delivering Secure Access and Accelerating Time-to-Value
There is a straightforward, cost-effective, fast and secure way for organizations to safely enable work for current and newly acquired employees during a merger or acquisition: Prisma Access Browser. Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access Browser quickly deploys and leverages security capabilities powered by Precision AITM, resulting in fast, secure access to business-critical applications and cost savings for the enterprise.
Fast Onboarding in Only Minutes
Prisma Access Browser can be deployed in minutes per user and delivers a near-native user experience. It requires only a simple download and no admin privileges. IT administrators can easily provision current and newly acquired employees through a unified management platform with granular identity-based access controls. Upon login and authentication, Users are greeted with a familiar browsing experience that requires zero learning curve.
Prisma Access Browser’s ease of use, ease of deployment, and granularity ensure smooth onboarding and proper access controls, even in diverse, global organizations with teams located across different countries and regions.
Safely Enable Work on Acquired Devices and BYOD
Prisma Access Browser enables users working from anywhere to enjoy consistent, Zero Trust access to software-as-a-service (SaaS), web, Gen AI and private applications on any device.
Prisma Access Browser can isolate the workspace on the browser from untrusted endpoints and protect organizations against advanced cyberthreats, insider risk and data leakage. Prisma Access Browser employs additional encryption on browser assets on the device and constant device posture checks while leveraging Advanced WildFireTM and Advanced URL Filtering, both powered by Precision AITM, to protect work on the browser from AI-powered phishing attacks and advanced malware.
Data is protected with Enterprise Data Loss Prevention capabilities built into the browser. These capabilities leverage over 1,000 data classifiers across PII, PCI, HIPAA and GDPR to accurately identify and secure sensitive data. With 20+ built-in DLP profiles, admins can quickly implement these data enforcements across their users.
Prisma Access Browser creates a secure environment on any device for web browsing and accessing any business-critical resource from both the acquired company and the acquirer.
Save on Costs Compared to Other Solutions
Prisma Access Browser is much more cost-effective than other solutions.
Save up to 85% in costs compared to shipping laptops.1 Prisma Access Browser is easily delivered and distributed to users with no hardware procurement, provisioning and shipping needed. Users can simply download and authenticate with no admin privileges required.
Save up to 79% in TCO compared to VDI.2 Prisma Access Browser does not need organizations to install and maintain infrastructure, significantly reducing costs while empowering superior user experience.
Customer Success with Prisma Access Browser: Improved ROI during M&As
Telit Cinterion is a global leader in enabling the Internet of Things (IoT). When it acquired the cellular IoT division of Thales, Telit needed to quickly connect more than 650 Thales people in 30 countries – and across multiple languages and cultures – to the new organization. It achieved this in only minutes using Prisma Access Browser, saving $1.9 million on manual configurations and maintenance. The ability to apply consistent security across all devices is helping Telit scale its business while closing security gaps from unmanaged devices, simplifying management and ensuring a frictionless browsing experience for all users.
To find out how Prisma Access Browser can help your organization enable more seamless and secure mergers and acquisitions so you can meet your goals for growth while reducing risk. Schedule a demo today and check out our solution brief for more information.
1Based on internal analysis with an independent third-party review.
2Ibid.