Shape Technologies Group Protects Acquisition Data During Global Growth Spurt

Challenges

• Protecting valuable intellectual property (IP) acquired through the M&A process
• Guarding against loss or leak of proprietary data during employee departures.

Critical needs

• Fast capture of all data residing on the devices of the acquired organization
• Insider threat monitoring

Code42 helped ensure IT efficiency and increased data security during SHAPE’s business growth. This provided SHAPE with the ability to ensure that valuable IP stays safely inside the company as restructuring takes place and employees depart.

Protecting IP during an acquisition

When SHAPE buys a company, the sell-side company’s IP is a core part of the value proposition. Unfortunately, that data is easily put at risk by employee actions and departures. That’s why it’s critical for SHAPE to immediately safeguard the files on the computers they’ve acquired to secure the data.

“Our initial goal is to get the data captured and backed up,” said Jeff Zuniga, director of IT operations. “Some people have taken it upon themselves to delete files thinking they’re helping by cleaning things up. Once we get the data protected, we are able to manage it and consume it as needed.”

SHAPE uses Code42 to quickly and easily protect the valuable — and often vulnerable — data and ensure it can always be recovered if lost.

Preventing data leakage during consolidation

Part of SHAPE’s acquisition strategy includes driving efficiencies through organizational consolidation. As they take steps to achieve those efficiencies, the industry leader is diligent about safeguarding its confidential and proprietary data from insider threats.

“We have a lot of IP like our drawings, sensitive information like cost of goods, where we purchase things, vendor lists,” said Jeff. “As part of that process we need to make sure we’re protecting our IP, that it’s not walking out the door.”

Recently, SHAPE used Code42 to protect IP and increase data security during the departure of more than 100 employees.