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Security Due Diligence Ahead of a Healthcare Add-On

A private equity firm evaluating a healthcare technology add-on needs a clear picture of inherited cyber risk before closing. Summit would run a structured two-week assessment, translate what it finds into deal terms, and set up a 90-day remediation plan for after close.

PlaybookPrivate Equity · Pre-Acquisition

This playbook at a glance

Private Equity & Portfolio Companies
  • 4steps in the first 30 days
  • 3decision points
  • 3deliverables at the end

The trigger

The situation a company is in when this conversation starts.

The sponsor has a signed letter of intent on a healthcare technology company that would be bolted onto an existing platform investment. The target handles protected health information for its customers, has never been through a formal security assessment, and its IT is run by a small team already stretched by the deal process. The deal team needs to know, before close, what risk they are inheriting, what it would cost to fix, and whether anything should change in the purchase agreement.

The first 30 days

How Summit would run the work, in order.

  1. Days 1–14: a diligence sprint scoped to the questions that move deal terms: how customer data is protected, who can reach it, which vendors touch it, and what happens when something goes wrong.

  2. Document review and structured interviews with the target's leadership and IT lead, kept to a few hours of their time so the deal process is not slowed.

  3. Control-by-control review against HIPAA's Security Rule and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, rated for likelihood and business impact rather than a raw list of findings.

  4. Days 15–30: findings translated into deal language for the investment committee, and the post-close plan sequenced so the highest-impact items would close first.

The decision points

The calls your leadership makes along the way. Summit brings the evidence and a recommendation; the decision stays yours.
  1. Which findings warrant a representation or an escrow in the purchase agreement.
  2. Which items belong in the first 90 days after close, and which can wait for the platform's normal program.
  3. Whether the estimated cost to remediate should change the price or the terms.

What you’d have at the end

Deliverables written to be used, not filed.
  1. A diligence memo for the investment committee: inherited risk in plain terms, the exposures that matter to price and terms, and the estimated cost to remediate.
  2. A 90-day post-close remediation plan with a named owner for each item, sequenced so the highest-impact items close first.
  3. A briefing for the platform company's leadership on what integration would require from their own security program.

The service behind it

M&A Advisory

This playbook draws on Summit’s M&A Advisory service. Every engagement is scoped to the company in front of us, so the order and the length can change.

How an engagement runs: the 5 stages

  1. First call
  2. Scope
  3. Discovery and baseline
  4. Analysis and plan
  5. Readout and handover
Schedule a ConsultationBook a 15-minute intro call

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