Bridging the Gap: How Qualys Simplifies NCA ECC 2024 Compliance for Businesses
As the digital environment advances, new and more sophisticated cyber threats emerge, necessitating stronger and more adaptive cybersecurity measures. Recognizing this need, the National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) of Saudi Arabia has introduced the Essential Cybersecurity Controls (ECC) 2024 (ECC–2:2024), an enhanced version of the NCA ECC–1:2018 framework.
The ECC–2:2024 framework represents a significant step forward in Saudi Arabia’s cybersecurity strategy, incorporating the latest security trends, addressing emerging threats, and ensuring alignment with international cybersecurity standards. This updated framework provides a more robust, comprehensive, and scalable approach to securing both traditional IT environments and modern technologies, including cloud infrastructure and industrial control systems. In this blog, we will discuss what the ECC–2:2024 framework entails, why it is essential, and how Qualys can help in achieving ECC–2:2024 framework requirements.
Understanding the NCA ECC 2024 Framework
The NCA ECC 2024 is a comprehensive set of cybersecurity controls designed to safeguard organizations against evolving cyber threats. Developed by Saudi Arabia’s National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA), this framework sets minimum security requirements for entities across both the public and private sectors, ensuring a standardized and resilient cybersecurity posture.
Building upon its predecessor, ECC–1:2018, the updated ECC–2:2024 incorporates enhancements based on global cybersecurity standards, national regulations, and lessons learned from past cyber incidents. This evolution reflects Saudi Arabia’s commitment to proactively addressing cybersecurity risks in an increasingly digital world.
Core Objectives of ECC 2024
- Enhancing Cybersecurity Across Critical Sectors – Strengthening defenses for government agencies, enterprises, and essential service providers.
- Standardizing Security Controls – Establishing a unified cybersecurity framework to ensure consistent implementation across industries.
- Mitigating Emerging Threats – Addressing risks associated with cloud security, ransomware, and supply chain vulnerabilities.
- Improving Governance & Risk Management – Reinforcing security oversight, compliance, and proactive risk mitigation strategies.
Key Domains of the NCA ECC 2024 Framework
The NCA ECC 2024 framework is structured around several critical cybersecurity domains, ensuring a robust and resilient security posture. These domains address fundamental aspects of cybersecurity management, governance, and operational security. The key areas of the framework include:
1. Cybersecurity Governance: Establishes policies, roles, and responsibilities to ensure compliance with security standards. It fosters a security-aware culture through defined governance structures. Effective governance helps organizations manage risks and enforce cybersecurity strategies. This ensures a proactive approach to cybersecurity oversight and regulatory adherence.
2. Cybersecurity Defense: Focuses on securing assets, IAM, network security, cryptography, and vulnerability management. It includes 15 subdomains and 60 controls to safeguard critical systems. By implementing layered security measures, organizations can reduce attack surfaces. This domain strengthens defenses against cyber threats through proactive security measures.
3. Cybersecurity Resilience: Ensures business continuity by integrating cybersecurity resilience into operations. It features four key controls that help mitigate disruptions and cyber incidents. Organizations can recover quickly from security breaches and maintain essential services. This domain focuses on minimizing downtime and ensuring operational stability.
4. Third-Party & Cloud Security: Addresses risks associated with vendors and cloud-based services to ensure data protection. It comprises two subdomains and eight security controls for supply chain security. Organizations can mitigate third-party risks through strict security assessments. This ensures secure partnerships and robust cloud security management.
The NCA ECC 2024 framework provides a structured approach to cybersecurity, ensuring compliance and resilience against evolving threats.
The Compliance Challenge: Overcoming Key Roadblocks
The NCA ECC 2024 framework provides a robust foundation for cybersecurity, yet organizations frequently encounter significant challenges in implementing its controls. One of the primary obstacles is adapting to evolving regulatory requirements. Ensuring compliance necessitates meticulous planning and resource allocation, as organizations must map controls, update policies, and align security configurations with new mandates.
Resource constraints present another major challenge, particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that may lack the financial, technical, and human resources needed to meet compliance obligations. Beyond internal limitations, organizations must also navigate third-party and supply-chain compliance. Verifying that vendors adhere to ECC 2024 requirements adds complexity, requiring organizations to assess supplier security practices, validate compliance documentation, and enforce contractual obligations.
Additionally, continuous monitoring and risk management remain critical concerns. Compliance is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process that demands real-time visibility into an organization’s cybersecurity posture. Identifying emerging threats and mitigating vulnerabilities requires a shift away from traditional compliance methods, which often rely on periodic audits and manual assessments. In today’s dynamic threat landscape, organizations must adopt proactive solutions to continuously monitor assets, detect security misconfigurations, and assess risks in response to evolving threats.
Ensuring NCA ECC 2024 Compliance with Qualys Policy Audit
Qualys Policy Audit empowers organizations to achieve and maintain compliance with the NCA ECC 2024 framework. By automating compliance assessments and aligning security controls with ECC 2024 mandates, Qualys Policy Audit helps organizations strengthen their cybersecurity posture and address regulatory requirements efficiently.
With Qualys Policy Audit, organizations can assess their compliance status against ECC 2024 requirements, generate detailed reports, and gain actionable insights into both technical and procedural security controls. This visibility enables organizations to identify compliance gaps, implement corrective actions, and ensure alignment with national cybersecurity directives.
Qualys Policy Audit provides a comprehensive library of 900 policies, 100 regulations, and over 22,000 technical controls spanning 400+ technologies, including operating systems, databases, web applications, network devices, firewalls, and browsers. However, ECC 2024 compliance extends beyond technical controls—many requirements involve procedural measures and governance practices that require manual validation.
To address these procedural aspects, organizations can leverage the Qualys Security Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) app. SAQ offers a library of security questionnaires designed to assess non-technical controls, such as governance policies, third-party risk management, and data protection practices. By combining Qualys Policy Audit for technical controls with SAQ for procedural assessments, organizations can implement a holistic, end-to-end compliance strategy for ECC 2024.
The Qualys Enterprise TruRiskTM Platform serves as a unified solution, enabling organizations to automate compliance, streamline reporting, and integrate cybersecurity risk management—all within a single platform. This simplifies compliance efforts, reduces manual overhead, and ensures organizations remain aligned with NCA ECC 2024 and other regulatory frameworks.
By adopting Qualys Policy Audit and SAQ, enterprises can efficiently navigate ECC 2024 requirements, enhance their security posture, and establish a proactive, continuous compliance approach in today’s evolving threat landscape.
To experience how Qualys Policy Audit can help organizations comply with the NCA ECC 2024 framework, start a trial today.