Case Study
FTI Technology Provides Extensive Data Identification and Transfer in Global Telecommunications Divestiture
A longstanding FTI Technology client in the telecommunications industry was preparing to divest a European business unit to a global network and voice services company. The organization needed to migrate the divesting business unit’s Microsoft 365 environments and data sources to the acquiring company, in compliance with numerous regulations and in a timely manner to uphold the parameters and deadlines of the transaction. FTI Technology’s global team coordinated with the client’s IT stakeholders to manage the data transfer, as well as a cross-functional deal team tracking the project.
Situation
For IT departments, divestitures can be complex exercises of separating all data pertaining to the divesting entity from the parent company’s systems. Managing the technical and regulatory aspects of the data migration is crucial to ensuring a smooth transition and minimal disruption to business operations. In this engagement, the client’s IT department needed support in defining the scope of the divestiture, including which IT assets, systems, and services were affected, and establishing a workflow to uphold business continuity and information security.
Throughout the transition, the client also needed to address cross-border transfer considerations and maintain compliance with numerous requirements, including obligations under industry regulations and the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe. Due to GDPR, and the fact that the migration involved data transfers to three countries with varying privacy laws, there were considerable negotiations between parties and European Work Councils to establish privacy agreements, manage access to protected data and ensure applicable data privacy measures would be reinforced throughout.
The process also needed to account for identification, review and isolation of “hold back” data that contained sensitive company information not to be conveyed to the purchaser.
These controls and safeguards were needed across 25 transfer servers running around the clock for weeks and incremental transfers of nearly 40TB of data between the client’s U.S. data locations and the purchaser’s U.K. datacenter.
Our Role
Experts from FTI Technology’s Information Governance, Privacy & Security practice, many who also had extensive experience managing data issues during mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, were engaged to oversee all data governance and technical aspects of the project. This included designing workflows for the data transfer, assessing dependencies, client interviews and communications, delivering the data to the purchasing organization and providing post-close support. The team’s adaptability to learn and use new tools to execute data transfers was also crucial, including adjusting coding, workflows and client deliverables as software changed and was updated throughout the project.
The team also provided:
- Development of a creative and effective method to scope the data transfer and ensure a fulsome delivery. This included analyzing online data ownership, usage and contractual obligations, and extensive surveying (via email, online portals and in-person interviews) of employees within the divesting business and its adjacent functions. The team also helped develop governance policies to inform how data would be separated or shared between divested and retained entities and address restrictions according to existing service agreements.
- Identification and documentation of dependences between different IT systems, applications and services to understand the impact of the divestiture on interconnected platforms and processes.
- Data analysis to identify what to transfer and anything that needed to be held back.
- Information governance advisory to design and oversee data movement in alignment with regulatory requirements.
- Careful attention to the handling of personal data, particularly in email and OneDrive, including implementing additional security controls around those locations and quality control checks to prevent data leakage. The team also interfaced with European Works Councils in several countries to facilitate negotiation and approval for data transfer plans pertaining to personal and human resources data.
- Implementation of a data loss prevention process in Microsoft 365 to ensure that no data was transferred around the approved processes.
- Transfer of approximately 40TB of data from the client’s Microsoft 365 environment and some legacy file shares to the purchasing company’s Microsoft 365 environment in Europe. Security and identity data maps were provided for transferred users to provide IT with visibility into the full extent of the migration.
- Post-close support for three months following the completion of the divestiture, to address employee datarelated challenges or instances of missing information.
Our Impact
Serving as compliance consultants and technical resources, FTI Technology completed a complex, regulated data migration on time, while maintaining high data quality. Data for privacy, security and compliance were ensured for the cross-border transfer of Microsoft 365 data for 1,700 users, supported with data maps for new company identities.
Due to the rigorous methodology FTI Technology implemented, there were few post-close issues for the client or the divested business, none of which were due to errors in FTI Technology’s work.