What is DORA?
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is a regulation that establishes a comprehensive framework for managing information and communication technology (ICT) risks for the EU financial sector. It defines technical standards that financial entities and their critical third-party technology service providers must comply with by January 17, 2025.
Imagine your financial institution as a fortress. DORA is like a blueprint for reinforcing its walls, shoring up its defences, and making sure it can withstand any siege. It requires financial institutions to perform:
- Information and Communication Technology Risk Management: Establish a framework to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate risks associated with information and communication technology (ICT) systems.
- Incident Response and Reporting: Implement a plan for identifying, reporting, and recovering from cyber incidents in a timely manner. This includes defining clear roles responsibilities for incident response and ensuring authorities are notified of major incidents.
- Digital Operational Resilience Testing: Conduct regular testing of your IT systems and incident response procedures to identify vulnerabilities and ensure they function as expected.
- Third-Party Risk Management: Carefully assess and manage the risks associated with third-party technology service providers your institution relies on. This includes ensuring they have appropriate security measures in place.
- Threat Intelligence Sharing: Share information about cyber threats and vulnerabilities with other financial institutions. This collaborative approach strengthens the overall defences of the EU financial sector.
DORA 5 pillars and their implications
Why is DORA important?
- Cyber-attacks are a constant threat to financial institutions, potentially causing significant financial losses and reputational damage. DORA aims to strengthen the industry’s defences against such attacks.
- A robust financial sector is essential for a healthy economy. By ensuring operational resilience, DORA helps to safeguard financial stability within the EU.
- Financial institutions hold sensitive customer data. DORA helps to protect this data by ensuring strong cyber security measures are in place.
Who does DORA apply to?
DORA’s reach extends across a broad spectrum of institutions within the EU financial sector. This includes traditional entities like banks and investment firms, along with newer players like crypto currency service providers. But DORA doesn’t stop there. It also applies to critical third-party service providers that financial institutions rely on for their daily operations. These third-party providers can include IT service providers, cloud service providers, and data analysis service providers.
What do you need to do?
The deadline for DORA compliance is January 17, 2025. To ensure your institution is prepared, here are some key actions to take:
- Gap Analysis: Assess your current cyber security posture against DORA requirements to identify areas needing improvement.
- Policy and Procedure Development: Develop or update policies and procedures aligned with DORA’s guidelines, covering ICT risk management, incident response, and third-party risk management.
- Technology Investment: Invest in necessary technologies to support DORA compliance, such as incident management software and security testing tools.
- Employee Training: Train your employees on DORA requirements and your organization’s incident response procedures.
As you prepare for DORA compliance, Valiantys offers specialized expertise in the design, deployment, and utilization of Jira Service Management. We are committed to delivering DORA-compliant service management solutions efficiently and with the highest quality. Partner with us to ensure your compliance efforts are successful and meet all deadlines without sacrificing quality or attention to detail.
So, how can Jira Service Management be helpful for DORA compliance?
The answer lies in Jira Service Management ‘s ability to address core functionalities that DORA compliance demands across the board.
- Incident Management for All: Whether you’re a bank managing a cyberattack or a cloud service provider responding to a system outage, JSM provides a streamlined platform for tracking and resolving incidents efficiently. This ensures prompt reporting and adherence to DORA’s incident response requirements, regardless of the organization type.
- Standardized Workflows for Everyone: Jira Service Management (JSM) can potentially automate internal workflows for tasks like notification triggers, task assignment, and issue escalation. This may help ensure consistent service delivery across an organization, which could be beneficial for DORA compliance.
- Knowledge Sharing Across the Ecosystem: DORA emphasizes information sharing about cyber threats. Jira Service Management’s knowledge base function can be a central repository for DORA regulations, security best practices, and incident response procedures. This empowers employees within financial institutions and their third-party providers to find solutions and follow compliant procedures, fostering a collaborative approach to cybersecurity across the financial sector.
- Potential for Improved Metrics and Measurement: Jira Service Management might offer reporting features to track key DORA metrics like mean time to repair (MTTR) and change failure rate (CFR). This data can be crucial for identifying areas for improvement and demonstrating DORA compliance.
- Enhanced Change Management (when integrated with other tools): By integrating Jira Service Management with change management tools, tracking changes and identifying potential risks before deployment becomes more effective, which will minimize incidents caused by faulty code or configuration.
- Facilitated Collaboration (potential with additional features): Jira Service Management might offer features that facilitate communication and collaboration between internal teams and external vendors during incident response. This can streamline communication, improve response times, and promote knowledge sharing across the organization. At Valiantys, our expertise in solution design for Jira Service Management ensures we can tailor a system specifically to enhance and facilitate these collaborative efforts.
The road to compliance
DORA represents a significant step forward in safeguarding the financial sector. By implementing a DORA-compliant approach, financial institutions can build stronger defences against cyber threats and operational disruptions. Non-compliance can result in significant consequences, including administrative fines, remedial measures, and potentially even criminal penalties. Jira Service Management, with its focus on streamlined workflows, improved communication, and clear reporting, can be a valuable tool in your DORA compliance journey.
If you’re looking to leverage Jira Service Management to enhance your IT service management practices and support DORA compliance efforts, Valiantys can help. We are Atlassian Jira Service Management specialists with extensive experience in helping organizations optimize their service desks. We can assist you with JSM implementation, configuration, and ongoing support to ensure you get the most out of this powerful tool.
Contact us today to discuss your Jira Service Management needs and how we can help you navigate the path to a more resilient and DORA-compliant IT infrastructure.
With DORA and NIS2 regulations on the horizon, ensuring data control and cloud compliance is crucial. Join us on June 18th, 11:00 AM CEST for our webinar: DORA & NIS2: Build Cloud Resilience with Ease
