M&A Professionals - What Happens After Confidential Files Leave Company

How do companies actually control confidential files shared with external advisers? I’m doing some research into how companies handle confidential information when working with external parties such as consultants, accountants, lawyers, investment bankers, agencies, or other advisers. I’m particularly interested in what happensafter a confidential file leaves the company. For example, imagine a company sends financial data, customer information, strategy documents, or transaction materials to an external adviser. I’d love to understand: How does your company normally share these files today? Email, SharePoint, data rooms, Google Drive, something else? Once the file is shared, can you actually tell who downloaded, printed, forwarded, or accessed it? If several people at an external firm have access, do you know exactly who is responsible for handling that information? Have you ever seen situations where confidential information was copied, forwarded internally, printed, screenshotted, or otherwise used outside the original purpose? Do existing tools such as VDRs, SharePoint, DLP, NDAs, or access controls solve this problem well enough, or are there still gaps? I’m still trying to understand whether this is actually a meaningful problem. Would especially love to hear from people working in: Consulting / Big 4 / accounting Investment banking / PE / VC Legal Corporate strategy / M&A Risk / compliance Cybersecurity / IT Data privacy / governance Even a short comment about how your organisation handles this would be extremely helpful. If anyone is willing to have a 10–15 minute anonymous chat about their experience, feel free to DM me as well. No company names or sensitive information needed.