EU DORA Requirements for Robust ICT Risk Management in Financial Services

The EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a regulatory framework designed to enhance the operational resilience of the financial sector in the European Union. Its relevance stems from the financial industry’s increasing reliance on information and communication technology (ICT) and the corresponding risks of cyber threats, operational disruptions, and technology failures.

The primary objective of DORA is to achieve a high level of digital operational resilience for regulated financial entities. To achieve this objective, DORA includes a number of high-level requirements on such entities, including those related to:

1. ICT Risk Management
2. Incident Reporting
3. Digital Operational Resilience Testing
4. Third-Party Risk Management
5. Information and Intelligence Sharing

The intelligent DevSecOps platform from Digital.ai can be used to help you meet DORA requirements in several ways:

1. Automation and Consistency in ICT Risk Management
   • Automated compliance checks and security policy enforcement are consistent with DORA requirements.
   • Automated testing and deployment processes reduce human errors and associated risks of operational disruptions.
2. Incident Reporting and Management
   • Continuous monitoring and automated alerting systems enable prompt detection and reporting of ICT-related incidents.
   • Automated incident response workflows can streamline the handling and mitigation of security incidents.
3. Resilience and Testing
   • Regular, automated testing, including continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, allows applications and infrastructure to be consistently tested for resilience. Digital.ai’s Intelligent DevSecOps platform also enables testing of a hardened/secured application, so that you test what you ship and ship what you test.
4. Third-Party Risk Management
   • Automated workflows can provide visibility into the software supply chain, helping to manage and mitigate risks from third-party components.
   • Integration with third-party risk management solutions can streamline the assessment and monitoring of third-party ICT service providers.
5. Information Sharing and Collaboration
   • Platforms often include collaboration tools that facilitate communication and information sharing among development, operations, and security teams
   • Automated updates to knowledge bases and ticketing systems ensure that information is current and accurate without requiring manual intervention. This streamlines the incident resolution process by providing support teams and end-users with the latest solutions and troubleshooting steps. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also can assist with compliance with DORA’s requirements for timely and accurate incident reporting and resolution, contributing to overall operational resilience.

Relevance of Change Risk Prediction and Application Hardening & Anti-Tamper Actions to DORA

Change Risk Prediction

1. Proactive Risk Management
   • Predictive Analysis: Financial institutions can proactively address potential vulnerabilities and mitigate risks by predicting the risks associated with changes before implementation. This aligns with DORA’s emphasis on robust ICT risk management frameworks.
   • Risk Mitigation: Early identification of high-risk changes allows organizations to take corrective actions, reducing the likelihood of disruptions and providing smoother, safer deployments.
2. Compliance and Governance
   • Automated Risk Assessments: Automated risk prediction tools ensure that every change is evaluated against compliance criteria in alignment with DORA’s stringent regulatory requirements.
   • Audit Trails: Maintaining detailed logs and risk assessment reports helps demonstrate compliance during audits and inspections.
3. Enhanced Decision-Making
   • Data-Driven Decisions: By providing data-driven insights into the potential impacts of changes, tools like Change Risk Prediction help decision-makers prioritize and manage changes more effectively, consistent with DORA’s objectives of minimizing operational risks.

Application Hardening and Anti-Tamper Actions

1. Security and Resilience
   • Enhanced Protection: Application hardening techniques, such as code obfuscation and encryption, make applications more resistant to reverse engineering and tampering, reducing the risk of malicious attacks. This is crucial for maintaining the integrity and security of financial applications, a key concern under DORA.
   • Tamper Detection: Anti-tamper mechanisms detect and respond to unauthorized modifications, ensuring that any attempts to compromise the application are identified and mitigated swiftly.
2. Incident Prevention and Management
   • Reduced Vulnerabilities: By hardening applications, financial institutions can reduce vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit, thereby decreasing the incidence of ICT-related incidents.
   • Rapid Response: In the event of a tamper attempt, automated responses can be triggered to address the threat, lessening disruptions and improving compliance with incident reporting requirements.
3. Third-Party Risk Management
   • Secure Integrations: When dealing with third-party applications and services, hardening measures help prevent these external components from becoming weak points in the system’s security architecture. For example, 2FA Apps or other forms of third-party authentication systems or Libraries/SDKs used in banking or trading apps.
   • Compliance Verification: Confirming that third-party providers implement adequate hardening and anti-tamper measures helps financial institutions manage and mitigate third-party risks, as mandated by DORA.

Integration with Digital.ai Platform

A DevOps Automation, Release Orchestration, and Developer Experience platform from Digital.ai can incorporate Change Risk Prediction and Application Hardening & Anti-Tamper actions in the following ways:

1. Change Risk Prediction Integration
   • Automated Risk Assessment: Integrating change risk prediction into the DevOps pipeline enables risk assessment for every change so that potential risks are identified and mitigated early in the development process.
   • Workflow Automation: Automating the approval process for low-risk changes and flagging high-risk changes for manual review allows changes to be managed efficiently and securely.
2. Application Hardening & Anti-Tamper Implementation
   • Security Best Practices: Embedding application hardening and anti-tamper techniques into the CI/CD pipeline enables security measures to be consistently applied across all applications.
   • Continuous Automated Compliance: Using integrations with tools like OPA (Open Policy Agent) enables you to continuously monitor and verify that selected security guards are present in delivered mobile apps and web applications.
   • Continuous Monitoring: Ongoing monitoring and automated responses to tamper attempts allow applications to remain secure and resilient throughout their lifecycle.

By integrating and automating these capabilities, Digital.ai can assist financial institutions seeking to comply with EU DORA regulations by providing robust ICT risk management, prompt incident reporting, regular resilience testing, effective third-party risk management, and enhanced information sharing. This contributes to the overall operational resilience and security of the financial sector and, at the same time, enables agile development and delivery standards.