What is DORA compliance?

DORA was developed in response to the rising complexity of digital ecosystems in financial services. Traditional capital buffers were not enough to counteract the effects of cyberattacks, system outages, or other ICT-related disruptions. Incidents such as ransomware attacks or system failures can compromise data integrity and erode customer trust. DORA fills this gap by creating a consistent and enforceable framework for digital resilience across the European financial sector.

DORA compliance aims to ensure financial entities can maintain operations during disruptive events, thus protecting the broader financial economy. This harmonization also simplifies compliance for cross-border operations, reducing the regulatory burden and maintaining a more unified cybersecurity posture across the EU.

Year over year breaches underscore the importance of DORA compliance, including: 

• Kingfisher Insurance 

  In October 2022, UK-based Kingfisher Insurance confirmed that a ransomware group stole 1.4TB of company data, including personal details of employees and customers. To gain access to the data, the cyberthieves accessed several email addresses belonging to staff, as well as passwords to Workday and Access.¹

• MOVEit 

  In May 2023, MOVEit, a managed file transfer software company, was attacked by a ransomware group which gained access to the sensitive data of over 2,700 organizations and 93.3 million people. The breach had far-reaching effects in the financial sector, emphasizing the risks facing the digital supply chain.² 

• Intesa Sanpaolo 

  Between April 2024 and February 2022, an employee at Intesa Sanpaolo – one of Italy’s largest banks – is alleged to have systematically accessed the account data of approximately 3,500 customers including many high-profile figures such as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and her predecessor Mario Draghi.³ 

• Adyen 

  In April 2025, Adyen, a Dutch payment processor, said its services were disrupted for about 8 hours over 2 days by a distributed denial of service attack which overwhelmed their European datacenters with traffic – peaking at millions of requests per minute – to render it unusable for visitors.⁴ 

These attacks illustrate the need for financial institutions to implement consistent, enforceable digital resilience standards such as the EU’s digital operational resilience act. 

      To comply with DORA regulations, you must:  

1. Understand your regulatory obligations. 

2. Determine which of the 21 categories of financial entity you represent. 

3. Identify your lead supervisory authority (EBA, EIOPA, or ESMA). 

4. Build a compliance roadmap. 

5. Conduct a comprehensive gap analysis to pinpoint shortcomings in your current ICT risk posture. 

6. Develop policies aligned with DORA principles 

7. Train your staff on DORA-related responsibilities
   
   To maintain operational resilience, you ought to: 

8. Set risk tolerance thresholds. 

9. Simulate incident scenarios. 

10. Craft business continuity plans. 

11. Assemble incident response teams.  

12. Design escalation procedures.
    
    To manage third-party risk, be sure to: 

13. Review all vendor contracts to ensure they align with DORA provisions.  

14. Include clauses for data security, performance benchmarks, and exit strategies. 

15. Conduct regular audits and risk reviews. 

16. Monitor and adjust on an ongoing basis.  

17. Track metrics such as downtime, response times, and vendor compliance.  

18. Use dashboards to visualize resilience trends and adjust strategies accordingly. 

    
     

DORA is specifically designed to enhance digital operational resilience in the financial sector. It fills regulatory gaps by providing a unified framework for ICT risk, third-party management, incident response, and operational continuity. While several other regulations touch on aspects of ICT and cybersecurity, DORA consolidates and elevates these responsibilities across the EU financial landscape.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a comprehensive privacy law that governs the processing and protection of personal data. It applies to all sectors and focuses on the rights of individuals and the obligations of organizations handling their data.

NIS2 (Network and Information Security Directive) aims to improve the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure and essential services, including the financial sector. It mandates national oversight and risk management practices.

EBA (European Banking Authority) guidelines on outsourcing apply to banks and financial institutions and offer direction on how to manage outsourcing arrangements, especially those involving ICT services.

EIOPA (European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) guidelines on ICT and security risk management apply to insurance and pension institutions, focusing on governance, risk management, and incident handling related to ICT.

Let’s see how the different regulations and guidelines stack up: 

While GDPR, NIS2, EBA, and EIOPA guidelines each address critical elements of privacy, cybersecurity, and risk, they operate within specific scopes or sectors. DORA brings these elements together into a unified regulatory framework specifically tailored to meet the needs of digital operations in the financial sector.

To summarize the differences: 

• Unlike GDPR, which centers on individual data subjects and privacy, DORA emphasizes the operational integrity of entire digital economy. 

• Unlike NIS2, which applies broadly across critical infrastructure, DORA focuses on financial institutions’ need to ensure continuity and manage third-party risk in ICT.  

• Unlike EBA and EIOPA guidelines, DORA is enforceable across all EU member states and provides specific mechanisms for oversight and accountability. 

This integrated approach makes DORA a cornerstone regulation that connects other regulations and guidelines and raises the bar for digital resilience in finance in Europe.

Several vendors offer tools to streamline DORA compliance by providing: 

• AI-driven observability, to identify and respond to anomalies in real time 

• Compliance frameworks and data governance tools, that align with supervisory expectations 

• Fail-safe architectures and threat intelligence sharing tools, to rapidly disseminate information on cyber-attacks to the community at large. 

Such platforms enable:  

• Continuous monitoring and risk assessment  

• Automated resilience testing  

• Secure access and identity management  

• Standardized incident documentation and audit readiness 

A new dimension of technology support comes from generative AI adoption. Generative AI (GenAI) models are being piloted to automate compliance checks, generate incident reports, and simulate threat scenarios. Financial institutions are using GenAI to enhance red teaming exercises by crafting attack simulations, as well as drafting recovery and communication protocols in real time during cyber exercises.

While promising, it can also come up with generative AI hallucinations, draft realistic phishing emails, or mimic legitimate system responses. DORA compliance frameworks are expected to evolve to address these risks.  

Enterprises should consider GenAI readiness assessments as part of their DORA roadmap, ensuring any deployment is governed and risk aware.

DORA represents a paradigm shift in how the financial sector approaches digital risk. It emphasizes proactive risk management, cross-sector collaboration, and strong oversight of ICT dependencies. While the compliance journey may be complex, it can also be seen as an opportunity to future-proof operations against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

As of January 2025, organizations should not only aim for compliance but also strive to embed resilience as a core strategic priority. The benefits extend far beyond regulatory adherence, extending to enhanced trust, operational reliability, and a stronger position in the digital economy.

Technology partners can play a pivotal role in this transformation. For example, advanced data masking technology provides:  

• Automated PII masking 

• Structured and unstructured data masking 

• Referential integrity across all source systems 

Enterprise-grade data masking reduces risk, improves compliance with DORA mandates, and simplifies operations across testing, development, and production environments. In doing so, it empowers financial institutions to make resilience an integral part of their operations.

As discussed above, one way to ensure DORA compliance – particularly in protecting sensitive data and reducing exposure – is by using Enterprise Data Masking (EDM) tools by K2view.

EDM lets you mask data in-flight, eliminating the need for staging environments where data might be vulnerable to exposure. It integrates data from multiple production systems, applies masking transformations, and ensures referential integrity across all data sources.

K2view supports both static masking for non-production environments and dynamic data masking based on user roles or environment context and meets DORA’s standards for ICT risk management and third-party access controls. For instance, those accessing test environments can receive masked data appropriate to their access level, significantly lowering the risk of both insider and outsider breaches.

EDM capabilities extend to unstructured data – such as PDFs, images, and documents – which are commonly overlooked by many data masking solutions. And its extensive library of prebuilt and customizable masking functions lets you tailor your masking to meet specific DORA compliance requirements quickly and painlessly.

In short, K2View not only supports DORA compliance but also helps you elevate your data protection posture overall.