Let’s start with the truth: if I had a euro for every company claiming they “take cybersecurity seriously,” I’d be writing this from a beach instead of my laptop.
Then came DORA — the Digital Operational Resilience Act — and it didn’t ask for promises. It asked for proof. Five proof points, to be exact, better known as the DORA 5 pillars.
They’re how Europe now measures whether your organisation can take a hit and keep operating.
1. ICT risk management: Know your weak spots
This is the “no excuses” pillar. You must identify, assess, and manage ICT risks across your systems, vendors, and staff. No more mystery spreadsheets or “we’ll fix it later.” DORA expects clear ownership, live registers, and traceable evidence, not PowerPoints.
2. Incident reporting: Four hours to shine (or panic)
Major ICT incident? You’ve got four hours to notify your regulator. That’s not much time if your response plan lives in a folder named “final_v3_really_final.docx.” DORA’s message: automate it, assign roles, and rehearse. Because “we didn’t know who was responsible” doesn’t fly anymore.
3. Digital operational resilience testing: Prove it works
Here’s where the DORA Act’s five pillars get real. Forget the once-a-year penetration test. DORA requires continuous validation, including vulnerability scans, scenario simulations, and even regulator-supervised red-team tests for major players. Resilience isn’t a theory. It’s repetition.
4. Third-party risk management: Trust, but verify
Your resilience is only as strong as your weakest vendor. Under DORA, every ICT provider — from your cloud platform to that niche payment API — must be assessed, monitored, and logged. If they fail, you fail. And yes, you need a DORA-compliant third-party register to prove it.
5. Information sharing: Cybersecurity is a team sport
The final pillar forces financial entities to grow up and collaborate. Sharing threat intelligence across institutions is resilience by design. When one company spots a threat, everyone benefits.
What it all means
The DORA regulation’s 5 pillars are about building muscle memory. You can’t spreadsheet your way to resilience. You have to live it: weekly workflows, automated testing, vendor checks, real drills.
Because in the DORA era, “always-ready” is the goal.
If you want to stop treating compliance as theatre and start treating it as culture, that’s exactly what we built Copla for. DORA without the drama.
