How DORA compliance future-proofs your organisation

As of the 17^th of January 2025, financial services organisations operating within the EU must comply with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). This mandates that they must adopt robust risk management and prevention frameworks to boost their resilience against cyber-attacks. As cyberattacks and threat actors become more advanced, it is a matter of when and not if a security breach will occur. For financial institutions, achieving compliance is more than checking a box, but making sure they have the correct measures in place to prevent an attack, and the building blocks to recover quickly with limited impact on business continuity.

A crucial element of compliance starts with modernised data management. This not only ensures data is protected from breaches or ransomware, but it helps future-proof it against future threats and regulation.

Achieving compliance protects your data

According to data by Fastly, companies take an average of seven months to recover from security incidents, costing them millions in damages and disruptions to operations. Yet, despite threat actors having the potential to cause lasting damage only 50% of financial institutions report feeling prepared to handle cybersecurity breaches.  This is why data infrastructure must be the starting point of an organisation’s risk management strategy. Having a clear oversight of your data, which can be achieved by careful identification, categorisation and analysis allows organisations to detect anomalies or threats more easily. This also allows financial institutions to spot vulnerabilities before cybercriminals have the chance to act.

Additionally, identification, categorisation and analysis empowers businesses to extract the most value out of their data. So, in addition to facilitating compliance, these practises can also support an organisation’s efforts to become more efficient and innovative, particularly in the wake of accelerating cloud adoption and AI implementations.   

Proactive measures build resilience

Robust data management extends beyond detecting and responding to threats in real time. According to data from Mayer Brown, 65% of financial institutions have risk management strategies that only look to the next 12 months. Without a thorough plan to support them in the longer-term, businesses fall short of having the adequate protections to be proactive and stay ahead of the constantly evolving threat-landscape. Regularly evaluating the resilience of existing security measures through stress testing and simulations is one example of how businesses can identify potential weak points in security systems and processes, allowing organisations to address them before they are exploited by malicious actors.  

Secure, hard copies of an organisation’s data can also go a long way in bolstering resilience to ransomware attacks. Having a secure back up of data means that in the event of data becoming corrupted by an attack, a secure, clean copy is readily available to fall back on, minimising downtime and supporting business continuity. Encrypting data and implementing strict access controls creates another layer of protection by protecting confidentiality and preventing data leaks. And having a pre-defined incident response strategy means that businesses can react quickly, reducing the damage of security breaches. Achieving compliance with DORA not only safeguards your data in the here and now, but by taking proactive measures to ensure that your data is protected, financial institutions will benefit from a long-term resilience against cyber-attacks. 

Securing your data for the long term

At the end of the day, establishing a culture of compliance isn’t just best practice, it ensures companies are on the front foot, and set up for long-term operational resilience and excellence. A long-term data management plan, including thorough oversight of data throughout its lifecycle, helps to keep data clean and organised. This means that companies can get the most out of their data, be it to unlock operational efficiencies, gain insights to improve customer experience or even sourcing new revenue streams.