Geopfert, national leader of security services out of McGladrey’s Chicago office, focuses on evaluating threats, spotting active breaches including malware; remediation and reducing the likelihood of future events.
He urges private equity firms to be mindful of acquisition targets that window-dress their financials ahead of a sale by cutting back spending on technology, security and upgrades.
“If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you may not pick that up, as an acquirer,” he said. Sometimes the new owner has to pay millions of dollars to get the portfolio’s company’s data security in line, he said.
Even worse, a target company may already be breached, which could lead to costly lawsuits, customer notification and system repairs. In the worst cases, a private equity firm may end up owning a company after its intellectual property has been stolen, robbing it of most of its worth.
A network security assessment may prevent these and other scenarios from doing damage to a deal.
“When you have a fear about a ticking time bomb or lost property, we go in and do a health check,” Geopfert said. “We treat them as breached until we can prove otherwise.”
In more fortunate cases, hackers may gain access without yet extracting anything of value. It is then possible to kick them out before damage is done.
While private equity firms and other acquirers hope for a silver bullet to solve network security challenges permanently, the threat continues to evolve.
“After 1,000 years, they still haven’t solved the challenge of stopping bank robberies,” he said. “Data centers are 100 times more complex. The only thing that makes as much money is the illegal drug trade, but hacking is lower-risk. It’s too attractive and you can make too much money doing it. It’s not going to go away.”
Telephone: 312-634-3410
E-Mail: Daimon.Geopfert@mcgladrey.com
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