Streamlining Cybersecurity Operations: How NIS2 and DORA Can Help

Cyber security is a growing concern in the contemporary society especially for firms operating in the virtual environment. With a steady increase in the use of technology around the globe, the requirements of security and protection of important data and networks have become crucial. Cybersecurity operations involve the methodologies, technologies, and tactics used to protect organizations’ information and systems from being compromised, as well as the ability to mitigate and address security breaches to maintain the confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility of the entities’ information.

The need to have strong cybersecurity operations cannot be overemphasized. As the cases and impact of cyber-criminal activities continue to rise and evolve, it is crucial for organizations to adopt and implement effective security measures for their networks, applications, and information. Failing to take necessary precautions leads to negative outcomes such as data loss, financial loss, tarnishing an organization’s image, and even non-compliance with the law.

Introduction to NIS2 (Network Information Security Directive)

NIS2 is the latest step in the European Union’s attempts to strengthen the protection of network and information systems of sectors providing essential goods and services. Implemented in 2022, NIS2 is the improved and enhanced version of the NIS Directive adopted in 2016.

NIS2’s purpose is to achieve an adequate level of cybersecurity in the EU to enhance the protection of essential services and critical infrastructure against cyber incidents. The directive covers more extensive industries such as energy, transport, banking, and digital infrastructure, among others.

Elements and Requirements of NIS2

1. Expanded Scope: NIS2 also broadens the initial directive with the inclusion of new sectors and entities, additionally including medium and large enterprises.
2. Stricter Security Requirements: It provides further and more stringent measures for organizations stating the measures on risk management, on incident response, and on secure supply chain management.
3. Incident Reporting: NIS2 requires organizations to notify national competent authorities of incidents that pose a significant risk to other organizations or the wider information system, allowing for the provision of timely reaction to new threats.
4. Enforcement and Penalties: The directive incorporates harsher measures of compliance whereby organizations that fail to adhere to the laid down cybersecurity measures will be liable to pay hefty fines.
5. Increased Cooperation: In the framework of the second edition of NIS (NIS2), the focus is placed on the need for increased cooperation and exchange of information among Member States.

Advantages of the Adoption of NIS2 in the Cybersecurity Processes

1. Improved Resilience: It is, therefore, possible for organizations to improve on the security standards provided under NIS2 to the organizations and consequently improve on the defense and the ability to recover from cyber events.
2. Reduced Cyber Risks: The application of the measures provided by the NIS2 can aid in the prevention of cyber threats and the ability for an organization to lessen the probability and severity of a cyberattack.
3. Enhanced Compliance: Adherence to NIS2 is useful in showcasing an organization’s willingness to safeguard itself against cyber threats, which is an essential factor in brand reputation and contract signing.
4. Strengthened Incident Response: The obligatory reporting and cooperation procedures stipulated by NIS2 can enhance the general performance of incident management and crisis solving.
5. Increased Collaboration: One of the most significant directions of the directive is the focus on the international cooperation to improve the cybersecurity, as such organizations can exchange the experience and practices.

Introduction to DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment)

The DORA framework is a full-spectrum method of increasing the efficiency of software delivery and operational performance. Originally, DORA was created to facilitate the software development and delivery, but most of its concepts and approaches can be successfully implemented in cybersecurity.

DORA is a set of key indicators and best practices against which an organization can compare to assess its DevOps maturity and, therefore, accelerate, increase the quality and security of software releases. Thus, with the help of DORA integration in the cybersecurity environment, the same principles can be used to improve the organization’s security.

How DORA Can Help Cybersecurity Operations

1. Continuous Improvement: Due to the focus on ongoing improvement and assessment, DORA’s influence on organizations can make their cybersecurity processes stronger by highlighting their areas of vulnerabilities.
2. Automation and Scalability: DORA emphasizes that work that can be automated and where tools are used in cybersecurity activities include vulnerability scanning, patch management, and incident response, so that scaling is more effective.
3. Collaboration and Communication: The fact that DORA has introduced requirements for cross-functional collaboration and clear communication can help build a more secure culture of an organisation’s personnel, wherein each of them understands his roles and responsibilities and works towards achieving the common organisational goal of protecting against cyber threats.
4. Incident Response and Recovery: Some of the practices that are illustrated by DORA for incident response and recovery can be directly mapped to cybersecurity operations and thus can help organizations to respond and recover from security incidents more efficiently.
5. Compliance and Governance: The cybersecurity operations will be aligned with the DORA’s principles will help the organisations to prove the compliance with the legal regulations and industry standards including the NIS2 directive.

Key Principles and Practices of DORA

1. Continuous Delivery: Organizing efficient, dependable and fast processes of software deployment, so that the time between making a change and deploying this change to the production environment is minimized.
2. Lean Management: Piloting lean techniques like WIP reduction and focusing on the system’s throughput to enhance the productivity and efficiency of security services.
3. Site Reliability Engineering: Adopting SRE principles to make security systems and infrastructure more reliable and available to the organization.
4. Observability: Ensuring the use of broad monitoring and observability solutions to get insight into the performance and the state of security controls and procedures.
5. Blameless Postmortems: Encouraging people to embrace the culture of learning and growth through postmortem analysis to learn from security mishaps without individuals getting punished.

The synergy of NIS2 and DORA for Enhancing Cybersecurity

When combining the threat assessment based on NIS2 directive elements with the DORA framework, it is possible to reach better results in terms of the organization’s cybersecurity operations. This integration can help organizations achieve the following benefits:

1. Comprehensive Risk Management: Thus, one can state that DORA could complement the security requirements of NIS2 by maintaining the constant improvement and data-driven approach to risk management.
2. Streamlined Incident Response: As DORA focuses on the incident response and recovery, it can help organizations to improve their incident reporting and coordination outlined in NIS2 for better reactions to security events.
3. Improved Compliance and Governance: NIS2 and DORA present organizations with an opportunity to work on their compliance and align with the industry’s best practices in cybersecurity, hence improving their security status.
4. Increased Automation and Scalability: DORA’s principles of automation and scalability could assist organisations in making the management of NIS2 security requirements more effective while delegating the rest of the work to more pressing security concerns.
5. Enhanced Collaboration and Communication: Both NIS2 and DORA have the potential of improving security culture in the organization due to their collaborative approach, which means that different departments can work together and have a common understanding of the implemented measures.

Challenges and Considerations in Implementing NIS2 and DORA

While the integration of NIS2 and DORA can bring significant benefits to cybersecurity operations, organizations may face several challenges and considerations in implementing these frameworks:

1. Resource Allocation: However, the measures introduced by NIS2 and practices listed in DORA can entail considerable investments in staff, training, and tools, which can be problematic for many organizations, especially smaller ones.
2. Cultural Shift: Inculcating the DORA’s culture of collaboration and continuous improvement may prove to be a major challenge within the organization as this entails a change in culture that may take a lot of time and effort.
3. Data Management: NIS2 and DORA depends on the collection, analysis, and management of large amounts of data, which may necessitate the need to build data governance and analytics capacity.
4. Vendor and Supply Chain Compliance: The task of making sure that all the vendors and supply chain partners of the organization are NIS2 compliant can be tricky and time-consuming since it would have to be a continuous process of vendor selection and monitoring.
5. Regulatory Uncertainty: Since NIS2 is still a quite recent directive, there can be some legal ambiguity regarding its application and this factor can complicate the task of developing compliance strategies.

Conclusion: Enhancing the Cybersecurity Operations through NIS2 and DORA

NIS2 and DORA can be regarded as the comprehensive and interrelated tools that would allow organisations to develop the strong and integrated approach to the protection of their digital assets and the guarantee of the continuity of their critical services.

It is expected that with the implementation of NIS2 and DORA, organizations will be able to reach a higher level of cybersecurity maturity, manage the risks and prove compliance with the requirements. Also it can enhance security awareness, cooperation and coordination among the organization’s members, as well as help the organization more effectively manage and recover from security breaches.

If you want to know how both NIS2 and DORA can help your organization get in touch with our cybersecurity advisers. We can assist you in creating a detailed strategy to strengthen your cybersecurity solutions and safeguard your business’s future.