How to ensure your business is DORA compliant

Financial services organisations experienced three times the number of cyber security breaches in 2023 than in 2022.

2023 was also the year that a piece of legislation was enacted that aims to strengthen security in financial services organisations – DORA (the Digital Operational Resilience Act). DORA applies to the many UK-based financial services organisations that have operations in the EU. These organisations must be compliant by 2025 or face fines of up to 2% of their global revenue.

To be compliant, DORA requires organisations to implement measures across – risk-management, incident reporting, operational resilience testing and ICT third-party risk monitoring. In return, DORA will significantly reduce the risk of cyber security breaches and will increase business leaders’ understanding of security.

While the long-term benefits are clear, the journey to compliance – and experiencing those benefits – may seem long and complicated. But, with improved network visibility you’ll find it’s easier than you thought.

Eradicate blind spots

The regulation: organisations need to safeguard their supply chains and customers from increasing cyber attacks.

The solution: improve your network visibility to reveal blind spots and protect against attack.

The high volume of sensitive data the financial services sector holds makes it the ideal target for cyber attackers – receiving the second highest level of attacks worldwide in 2023.

To safeguard your customers from attack you need effective systems and processes in place to ensure you’re always one step ahead of bad actors. The simplest way to do this is to improve your network visibility so you have clear oversight over your entire network, including any blind spots.

With this detailed insight into data traffic and network activity, you can identify and mitigate potential security threats before they cause significant disruption. By taking a proactive approach to security, you’ll meet DORA’s requirements for robust risk management.

How we can help: Gigamon Precryption provides you with the operational resilience you need to meet DORA requirements. With comprehensive visibility across your organisation's entire network, Precryption eliminates blind spots by revealing concealed threat activity and anomalous data before it hits an encryption library and moves on to your network. In other words, it stops threats before they can get a foot in the door.

Test regularly

The regulation: Organisations should implement resiliency testing programs based on their risk assessments.

The solution: Conduct regular stress tests to identify weaknesses, vulnerabilities and failures.

The threat landscape is constantly evolving so it’s vital that you’re up to date with the latest risks and regularly test your ability to defend against them.

Financial services organisations have long been on high alert for ransomware attacks, but cyber extortion is expected to be more common in 2024 –there’s always a new threat lurking around the corner hoping to exploit a weakness.

But you can strengthen your defences by conducting regular risk assessments to identity vulnerabilities before bad actors discover them. With improved network visibility, your risk assessments will be more accurate, and you’ll be able to create stronger resiliency testing programs.

How we can help: GigaSMART enables real-time monitoring of network performance, traffic and data, giving you the enhanced visibility you need to identity any weaknesses or vulnerabilities in your system. Armed with these insights, your resiliency testing programs will secure any gaps in your defences.

Report incidents

The regulation: The reporting of breaches needs to be faster to ensure quicker response and reduced impact.

The solution: Implement centralised management tools to increase incident response times.

If a bad actor does slip through the cracks, your customers could be severely impacted. You can reduce the impact of a breach by having efficient reporting systems that quickly identify the attack and remediate it.

You can speed up your response times by using a centralised management tool. These tools enable you to generate and maintain logs and records of network activity. With all your systems integrated in one location, you can compile reports and respond quickly to attacks without being slowed down by system incompatibilities. Which means that if a bad actor does slip through your defences, you’ll be able to send them straight back out again.

How we can help: GigaVUE Appliances provide real-time insights, helping you to rapidly identify the source and scope of the problem, and create a faster and more coordinated response.

Achieve compliance with network visibility

These solutions all have one thing in common – improved network visibility. The ultimate aim of DORA is to improve the resilience and security of the financial services sector and the best way to do that is to ensure that you have as much insight into your network as possible.

You can make this easy for yourself by implementing tools that have been specifically designed to provide you with this visibility. These tools will also help prevent threats and rapidly remediate them when they do occur.

With these systems in place, you can rest assured that you are DORA compliant. Then you can start enjoying the benefits of your new processes and the security of adhering to the new legislation.