{"id":36582,"date":"2025-02-20T04:57:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T09:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eginnovations.com\/blog\/?p=36582"},"modified":"2025-02-20T04:57:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T09:57:41","slug":"dora-compliance-an-opportunity-for-msps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eginnovations.com\/blog\/dora-compliance-an-opportunity-for-msps\/","title":{"rendered":"DORA Compliance – An Opportunity for MSPs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

For Managed Service Providers (MSPs)<\/a> in the EU, who serve financial organizations, DORA regulatory compliance is a hot topic. The DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act)<\/a> is a new regulation that came into force on Jan 17th, 2025, aimed at ensuring the operational resilience of financial entities in the EU, focusing on technology risk management and minimizing disruptions in critical services.<\/p>\n

MSPs serving EU financial institutions need to be mindful of DORA as non-compliance could result in penalties and reputational damage. Moreover, since DORA mandates robust monitoring, testing, and reporting processes, and that financial organizations also need to verify that their third-party suppliers are DORA compliant<\/strong>, MSPs serving this sector will be required to demonstrate adherence to this regulation to existing customers and future growth prospects.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The opportunities DORA presents for MSPs<\/span><\/h2>\n

Whilst DORA introduces increased overhead and risk for many MSPs, it also presents opportunities for modern MSPs<\/a> who get ahead of the market and automate the components necessary to achieve compliance.<\/p>\n

By adopting Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps)<\/a> for real-time monitoring and automation in reporting, MSPs can not only ensure compliance with DORA but also reduce manual intervention, optimize their operational costs, and improve service reliability. Moreover, by choosing the correct set of monitoring and observability features, MSPs will be able to automatically produce reports and tangible evidence of DORA compliance that EU financial entities are now required to seek when choosing an MSP.<\/p>\n

Meeting DORA’s stringent formalized standards is likely to give those MSPs who embrace DORA\u2019s ethos a competitive advantage, as financial institutions look for reliable, secure and more sustainable providers who can demonstrate compliance with the minimum of fuss. Beyond this, steps MSPs can take to achieve turnkey \/ by-process adherence to DORA are often the same measures that will improve general efficiency and quality of their services to attract wider business and increased growth.<\/p>\n

<\/span>What is DORA?<\/span><\/h2>\n

DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is an EU regulation focused on strengthening the operational resilience of financial entities by managing ICT risks, ensuring incident reporting, testing, and third-party risk oversight.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve already written a detailed article covering DORA in some depth, including links to the original regulations and several third-party articles designed to guide you through the basics of DORA from a number of perspectives. See: What is the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)? Everything you need to know about DORA compliance. | eG Innovations<\/a>. This overview highlights just how much of the regulation pertains to proactive monitoring and anomaly detection.<\/p>\n

<\/span>What are the 5 core pillars of DORA?<\/span><\/h2>\n

There are 5 main pillars (principles \/ tenens) to the DORA regulations, namely:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. ICT Risk Management:<\/strong> Financial entities must implement comprehensive frameworks to manage and mitigate risks related to Information and Communication Technology (ICT).<\/li>\n
  2. Incident Reporting:<\/strong> Organizations are required to report major ICT incidents to competent authorities within specific timeframes to ensure transparency and swift action.<\/li>\n
  3. Digital Operational Resilience Testing:<\/strong> Regular, thorough testing of ICT systems to identify vulnerabilities and ensure operational continuity during disruptions.<\/li>\n
  4. Third-Party Risk Management:<\/strong> Ensuring that third-party service providers meet stringent operational resilience standards and mitigate any risks posed by external vendors.<\/li>\n
  5. Information Sharing:<\/strong> Encouraging collaboration and information exchange among financial entities, regulators, and other stakeholders to enhance collective resilience against cyber threats and incidents.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"An<\/p>\n

    <\/span>What does this mean for MSPs?<\/span><\/h2>\n

    DORA aims to ensure that financial entities are capable of withstanding, responding to, and recovering from disruptions and threats to their Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems. The regulation extends beyond banks, insurers, and investment firms to include their third-party ICT service providers, and including MSPs. If you are an MSP who delivers IT services to financial organizations within the EU, your operations almost certainly will fall under its remit. Importantly, it is the location of the customer within the EU that dictates DORA\u2019s reach and so the regulation will also apply to MSPs located in the USA, UK and elsewhere providing ICT services to European financial entities.<\/p>\n

    DORA has been deliberately designed to have a ripple and trickledown effect. In the same way that EU financial organizations are required to verify that you have processes and tools in place to comply, you in turn will be obligated to ensure that your own third-party ICT suppliers also comply.<\/p>\n

    <\/span>How can MSPs show financial customers that they are DORA-ready and choose monitoring tooling that is fit for DORA?<\/span><\/h2>\n

    <\/span>Framework standards<\/span><\/h3>\n

    \"imagesRecognized international frameworks such as SOC 2 Type audits and ISO\/IEC 27001:2022 certification can go a long way to demonstrating to your customers that you are prepared for DORA compliance. These are amongst some of the validation frameworks we\u2019ve adopted ourselves at eG Innovations, see: Information Security and Compliance | eG Innovations<\/a> for details. When choosing your own suppliers for monitoring or management tooling, selecting vendors and products with these types of certifications can help you demonstrate to your customers that you are doing due diligence validating your own third-party supply chain.<\/p>\n

    SOC 2 Type audits and ISO\/IEC 27001:2022 certifications alone do not mean that an organization is DORA compliant but an organization with them in place is much better placed to be compliant. Some details on the nuances of this can be found on many third-party sites, such as:<\/p>\n