Ensuring Compliance with DORA: How Qualys Solutions Can Help

Introduction

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a new regulation implemented by the European Union to ensure the stability and security of the financial sector. Coming into effect in 2022, DORA mandates enhanced cybersecurity and operational resilience standards for financial institutions.

This blog post explores how Qualys, with its integrated apps – including Policy Compliance, Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response (VMDR), and CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM) – can help organizations comply with DORA. 

1. Policy Compliance

Qualys Policy Compliance (PC) offers 950 out-of-the-box policies, 20,000 controls, 350 technologies, and 100 regulations and frameworks—including ones for DORA, GDPR, PSD2, and other European Union mandates. Qualys PC can ensure up to 86 percent MITRE ATT&CK coverage as compared to vulnerability management alone. It can automate the process of assessing and enforcing security policies that align with DORA requirements. Organizations can identify deviations from the desired security standards by conducting comprehensive and continuous scans.

The app also helps streamline compliance reporting, enabling organizations to demonstrate their adherence to DORA to regulators and auditors. With Qualys PC, organizations can proactively address potential security vulnerabilities and ensure they are well-prepared for DORA compliance audits. 

2. Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response (VMDR) 

Managing vulnerabilities effectively is fundamental to meeting DORA’s cybersecurity standards. Qualys Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response (VMDR) offers organizations real-time visibility into their IT environment, identifying potential vulnerabilities and providing actionable insights for mitigation. The app continuously monitors assets, including on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure, ensuring no vulnerabilities go unnoticed.

By integrating seamlessly with Qualys Patch Management (PM), organizations can automate the remediation process, ensuring swift action is taken to address identified vulnerabilities. With VMDR, enterprises are empowered with visibility and insight into cyber risk exposure – making it easy to prioritize vulnerabilities, assets, or groups of assets based on business risk. Security teams can take action to mitigate risk, helping the business measure its true risk, and track risk reduction over time. 

3. CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM)

The DORA regulation highlights the importance of maintaining accurate visibility and inventory of an organization’s digital assets. Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM) provides comprehensive asset discovery and inventory capabilities, regardless of the size and complexity of the infrastructure.

With accurate asset data, organizations can proactively assess risks, mitigate potential threats, and maintain compliance with DORA’s asset management requirements. The app also enables organizations to identify unauthorized devices or software, ensuring a robust security posture and reducing the risk of cyberattacks.

A risk-based approach to cybersecurity is built on a foundation of attack surface management (ASM). With CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM), Security and IT Ops gain both an attackers’ and defenders’ view of their environment for complete, 360-degree visibility of assets, asset groups, domains, subdomains, End-of-Life (EOL) tracking, and more. Together with External Attack Surface Management (EASM), CSAM helps organizations discover, enrich, detect, prioritize, and orchestrate workflows between Security and IT teams to eliminate workflow friction, improve remediation, and slash cyber risk. 

Conclusion

Complying with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) requires financial institutions to enhance their cybersecurity and operational resilience measures. Organizations can simplify and streamline the path to compliance by leveraging Qualys’ suite of integrated apps – including Qualys PC, Vulnerability Management, Detection and Response (VMDR), and CyberSecurity Asset Management (CSAM).

These apps help organizations identify vulnerabilities, enforce security policies, maintain accurate asset inventories, and demonstrate compliance to regulators and auditors. By employing these tools, organizations can strengthen their cybersecurity posture, meet DORA’s requirements, and safeguard the financial sector from potential risks and threats.