For this reason, the EU has introduced two key regulations that together set a new standard for digital resilience: NIS2 Directive and DORA RegulationThese regulations aim to strengthen the ability of both public and private actors to protect themselves from cyber threats and ensure business continuity in digital environments. They guide organizations to consider information security, supply chain management and continuity planning in a more systematic and proactive manner.
The NIS2 Directive (Network and Information Security Directive 2) is the European Union's response to the growing challenges of cybersecurity. It is an updated version of the previous Cybersecurity Directive and includes stricter requirements for actors within its scope. The central idea of the directive is to ensure that key actors in society, both public and private, are able to anticipate cyber threats, detect anomalies in time and act effectively to control the situation.
A significant change is that the obligations are expanding to a wider range of actors, including medium-sized enterprises and public sector entities such as municipal water utilities, healthcare organizations, and technology companies. This significantly increases the scope of the regulation and requires organizations to integrate cybersecurity into their normal business operations.
In practice, this means that organizations must build comprehensive risk management processes, implement systems for identifying and reporting incidents, ensure the security of supply chains, and invest in personnel skills in cybersecurity matters. It is a comprehensive cultural change, where cybersecurity becomes a central part of the organization's strategic thinking.
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is an EU regulation that aims to improve the digital resilience of the financial sector. DORA is not limited to traditional financial players such as banks and insurance companies. It broadly covers all financial sector companies, including crypto service providers, payment intermediaries and other companies offering digital financial services, making the scope of DORA significantly more comprehensive than previous regulations.
The main objective of DORA is, above all, to strengthen digital resilience and the continuity of financial operators' operations in disruption situations. Even if information systems are, for example, subject to a cyber attack, crash or technical failure, operations must continue without interruption. DORA also sets requirements for how risks are identified and managed, how to prepare for disruptions in advance and how to recover from exceptional situations as quickly and efficiently as possible.
A significant part of the DORA reforms also relates to how financial sector actors use external technology partners, such as cloud service providers. In the current operating environment, more and more financial sector services rely on external service providers, such as cloud service providers, which form a critical part of the technical backbone of their operations. Certain critical technology actors can be placed directly under supervision, which will allow authorities to monitor and assess the ability of these actors to respond to digital risks, which is a significant change from the past.
DORA brings greater and more consistent control to the entire financial sector than ever before. It creates a level playing field across Europe, improving not only customer confidence but also market stability. At the same time, it raises the bar for technological maturity and forces organizations to rethink their digital systems and partnerships.
NIS2 and DORA regulations impose broad and diverse obligations on organizations, including cybersecurity incident classification and reporting, ensuring supply chain security, business continuity management, third-party oversight, and ongoing staff training and technical skills development. Meeting these requirements requires organizations to take a holistic approach that integrates cybersecurity into strategic risk management and daily operational activities.
It is essential that organizations are able to document their operations accurately and transparently to authorities. This means developing concrete metrics and auditing practices, as well as defining clear responsibilities within the organization. Implementing compliance cannot rest on the shoulders of individual experts, but requires strong commitment from management and the active participation of all personnel.
Graniitti's experts have extensive process expertise and experience in comprehensive change projects that introduce new operating methods that cover the entire personnel.
Several new initiatives are already underway on the EU regulatory agenda, such as the AI Act on artificial intelligence, the Cyber Resilience Act on cyber resilience, and the Data Act and Digital Services Act on data and digital services. These will increasingly require organizations to develop their internal capabilities to respond to the changing regulatory environment.
Strengthening digital resilience is both a legal obligation and a strategic competitive advantage. Organizations that proactively and comprehensively address this development are in a better position to secure their business continuity and maintain trust with their stakeholders.
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