Cracking The DORA Code

Cracking The DORA Code

The EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) regulation, enacted in January 2025, represents a significant compliance uplift for financial institutions, encompassing banks, insurers, asset managers, payment providers and crypto-asset firms. All in-scope entities have had to review – and likely overhaul – their IT risk management practices to meet the required standards. A key focus of the regulation is the risk posed by third-party dependencies, such as cloud services and fintech partners, with the legislation requiring updates to contracts and vendor management processes. This shift demands greater investment in cyber security, infrastructure resilience and governance frameworks.

At the implementation date in January, many firms remained unprepared for full compliance (see Verdantix High Stakes Ahead: Navigating The Post-DORA ERA). Three months on, 86% of financial institutions report that they are still not fully compliant with DORA regulations. This is due to the need for both process changes and the implementation of supporting technologies – such as AI solutions, cloud security, automation for monitoring, third-party risk management platforms and tools for incident reporting and resilience testing – to meet DORA requirements.  

To support firms, several vendors have introduced solutions designed to streamline compliance and resilience efforts. 3rdRisk offers a cloud-based platform with features such as one-click export of the register of information, including a health check of required fields, as well as pre-loaded DORA requirements, educational content, automated third-party risk assessments, and incident reporting tools. These features save firms significant time in design, configuration, assessment and reporting, while providing real-time insights into their internal and external controls. DORApp, meanwhile, simplifies compliance by automatically generating eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), reducing the risk of errors and manual work. Everbridge provides an integrated platform that helps firms manage DORA’s core requirements, from threat detection to business continuity planning. The IBM Z Security and Compliance Center provides a visual representation of compliance posture with DORA, while using AI and machine learning (ML) to unify data across on-premise and cloud systems, enabling quicker incident response and minimizing downtime. Miratech’s Alyne platform offers a pre-mapped DORA controls library, facilitating gap analysis and action planning, with integration application programming interfaces (APIs) supporting risk and incident management. 

Firms can therefore leverage a myriad of user-friendly and configurable platforms to stay compliant with DORA and avoid hefty non-compliance penalties. Notably, complying with DORA also delivers strategic benefits, such as heightened stakeholder trust due to the increased visibility of digital operations and resilience postures. 

To stay informed on further regulatory updates, subscribe to the Verdantix Risk Management newsletter – and watch out for our upcoming report on DORA’s impact on operational resilience software.