With the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) set to come into full force on January 17, 2025, financial institutions operating within the European Union, along with their service providers, must prepare to comply with stringent requirements aimed at ensuring digital resilience.
Sentinel’s comprehensive suite of tools, particularly Sentinel Spaces, offers a robust solution to help organisations meet these regulatory demands. This blog will explore how Sentinel Spaces can facilitate compliance with key articles of DORA, emphasising its potential to streamline operations, enhance communication, and fortify crisis management protocols.
Understanding DORA and Its Key Articles
DORA mandates financial institutions to implement rigorous ICT risk management frameworks. Three articles in particular—Article 11 (Response and Recovery), Article 14 (Communication), and Article 19 (Reporting of ICT-Related Incidents)—highlight the importance of robust communication and crisis management strategies.
- Article 11 focuses on establishing ICT business continuity policies with comprehensive crisis communication plans.
- Article 14 requires financial entities to maintain communication policies for both internal and external stakeholders, ensuring effective dissemination of information during ICT-related incidents.
- Article 19 mandates timely reporting of major ICT-related incidents and significant cyber threats to clients, detailing measures taken to mitigate adverse effects.
How Sentinel Spaces Support DORA Compliance
Sentinel Spaces is designed to enhance organisational resilience through efficient space creation, user management, and streamlined communication channels. Here’s how Sentinel Spaces can help organisations comply with DORA:
1. Efficient Space Creation and Management
- Creating and Naming Spaces: Administrators can easily create new spaces for specific projects or crisis management scenarios, such as “ICT Risk Management” or “Incident Response” (Creating Spaces document).
- Cloning Existing Spaces: To replicate successful frameworks, Sentinel allows the cloning of existing spaces, ensuring consistency across different areas of operation
- Organised Groups within a Space: To get more granular, staff and external contacts can be organised into groups or teams and access selected documents and receive group-only communication.
2. Enhanced Communication and Coordination
- Bulk Verification Messages: Sentinel supports the sending of bulk verification messages via SMS and email, ensuring that all users are verified and updated promptly.
- Crisis Communication Plans: Through its verification delivery channels, Sentinel enables organisations to quickly disseminate information to all relevant internal staff and external stakeholders during a crisis, fulfilling DORA’s requirements for effective communication.
3. Streamlined User and Contact Management
- Import and Update Users: The self-registration system, Import Wizard or API facilitates the bulk import and updating of user or contacts data, ensuring that contact information is current and comprehensive
- Bulk Deletion of Users: For data management and compliance purposes, organisations can also bulk delete users and contacts as needed, to comply with data management requirements.
4. Comprehensive Dashboard and Reporting Tools
- System Dashboard: Sentinel’s dashboard provides an overview of system users, current spaces, and activity logs, offering administrators a centralised platform to monitor and manage compliance efforts.
- Reporting Capabilities: Detailed reporting on user activities, space utilisation, and document management ensures transparency and accountability, essential for DORA compliance.
Practical Implementation for DORA Compliance
To illustrate the practical application of Sentinel Spaces in achieving DORA compliance, consider the following scenario:
- Scenario: A financial institution needs to ensure compliance with DORA’s Article 14 during a major ICT-related incident.
- Implementation: The institution can create a dedicated space named “Incident Response Team” using Sentinel Spaces. They can clone this space from an existing “Crisis Management” space to retain critical elements such as user roles and communication protocols.
- Communication: Using the bulk verification and messaging features, the organisation can promptly notify all relevant internal and external stakeholders about the incident and provide real-time updates on mitigation measures.
- Reporting: Through Sentinel’s reporting tools, the institution can generate detailed reports on the incident response activities, ensuring that all actions are documented and compliant with regulatory requirements.
Conclusion
Sentinel Spaces offers a powerful and flexible solution for financial institutions aiming to comply with the Digital Operational Resilience Act.
By leveraging its space creation, user management, communication, and reporting capabilities, organisations can enhance their operational resilience, streamline compliance processes, and ensure they are well-prepared to meet the challenges posed by DORA.
As the January 2025 deadline approaches, now is the time for organisations to invest in tools like Sentinel Spaces to safeguard their digital infrastructure and maintain regulatory compliance.
Blog Cover Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
