DORA Compliance Checklist: A Comprehensive Guide to Digital Operational Resilience Act

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is coming soon and is set to revolutionize the way financial institutions manage and mitigate operational risks. To stay ahead in this new regulatory landscape, a superficial understanding of DORA won’t suffice—you need a comprehensive roadmap for compliance.

This blog offers a brief overview of DORA and a detailed checklist to help you get started on your journey to DORA compliance:

What is DORA?

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a new EU regulation that aims to strengthen the digital operational resilience of financial entities. It requires financial institutions and their critical third-party service providers to have robust measures in place to withstand, respond, and recover from ICT-related disruptions and threats, including cyberattacks.

DORA compliance complements existing EU cybersecurity regulations, such as the GDPR and the NIS2 Directive, adding an extra layer of protection for critical infrastructure.

Who Needs to Comply with DORA?

DORA compliance applies to two main categories

• Financial institutions in the EU: This includes a wide range of entities such as banks, payment and e-money institutions, investment firms, crypto-asset service providers, and insurance firms, among many more.
• Critical third-party service providers: These are firms that provide essential ICT services to financial institutions, such as cloud providers, data analytics services, and other tech vendors.

DORA Compliance Deadline and Penalties

The deadline to comply with DORA requirements is January 17, 2025. Non-compliance can result in significant financial penalties:

• Financial institutions may face fines up to 2% of their total annual worldwide turnover or 1% of their daily turnover, with a maximum fine of €1,000,000 for individuals.
• Critical third-party ICT service providers could face even higher fines of up to €5,000,000, with a maximum fine of €500,000 for individuals.

The DORA Compliance Checklist

Here’s a comprehensive checklist that covers the key areas you need to address to simplify and streamline your path to DORA compliance:

• Understand the Scope: Determine if your organization falls within the DORA jurisdiction and identify the specific requirements and guidelines applicable to your business type and size.
• Conduct Gap Analysis: Perform a comprehensive gap and risk assessment of your ICT systems against DORA requirements to identify compliance gaps and vulnerabilities.
• Create an Incident Response Plan: Develop a detailed plan that outlines your organization’s approach to identifying, responding to, and recovering from ICT-related security incidents and operational disruptions. Ensure the plan emphasizes clear roles and responsibilities, communication protocols, and recovery procedures.
• Establish Robust ICT Risk Management: Implement policies, procedures, and controls to identify, assess, and mitigate risks related to your ICT systems, including cybersecurity threats and operational vulnerabilities.
• Establish Resilience Testing: Develop standardized resilience testing procedures to assess the effectiveness of your ICT systems under various scenarios to ensure they can withstand disruptions.
• Manage Third-party Risk: Evaluate the resilience and security measures of your third-party suppliers, especially entities providing critical ICT services. Ensure they comply with DORA requirements to minimize supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Continuously Monitor and Assess: Implement ongoing monitoring processes to detect and respond to emerging risks and vulnerabilities promptly.
• Train Employees and Raise Awareness: Conduct comprehensive training programs to educate employees about cybersecurity best practices, incident reporting procedures, and their roles in maintaining operational resilience.

How letsbloom Can Help?

Don’t let DORA complexities overwhelm you. letsbloom can help you effortlessly meet the DORA compliance requirements. Our unified cloud security and compliance management platform allows you to scan your cloud workloads to uncover compliance gaps and vulnerabilities and provides a detailed tactics breakdown against the MITRE ATT&CK framework. This enables you to prioritize and remediate risks based on their criticality with a single click or set up automation rules, helping you stay ahead of the compliance requirements.

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