How 3rdRisk Helps Financial Firms Optimise DORA Compliance

Achieving DORA compliance – the EU’s new Digital Operational Resilience Act – is no small feat for financial institutions. Many CISOs and compliance teams feel the pressure: a recent survey found 41% of IT and security teams report increased stress due to DORA. Nearly all organisations still feel unprepared to meet DORA’s demands. This comes as DORA took effect in January 2025, raising the bar for how banks, insurers, and asset managers manage ICT risks and third-party providers. The challenges are real – from integrating new ICT risk management frameworks to handling continuous vendor oversight. We at 3rdRisk understand these pain points. We’re here to help simplify DORA compliance for financial firms, easing the burden on your teams while strengthening your digital operational resilience. In this post, we’ll break down DORA requirements, discuss why third-party risk is central, and show how 3rdRisk’s platform automates and streamlines compliance. Let’s turn DORA from a headache into an opportunity.

Understanding DORA Compliance Requirements

DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) is a sweeping EU regulation aimed at bolstering operational resilience in the financial sector. It ensures banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and other financial entities can withstand, respond to, and recover from ICT disruptions – whether cyberattacks or IT failures. In practice, DORA harmonises rules across the EU, applying to over 20 types of financial entities and their ICT service providers.

Key DORA requirements span several pillars of ICT risk management:

• ICT Risk Management: Firms must establish a robust ICT risk management framework covering everything from cybersecurity policies to business continuity plans. Boards are accountable for defining and approving this framework to ensure resilience is baked into the organisation’s strategy.
• ICT Incidents & Reporting: Institutions need processes to identify, track, and report major ICT-related incidents (like outages or breaches) to regulators Timely reporting and transparent communication are mandatory under DORA.
• Digital Operational Resilience Testing: Regular testing (e.g. drills, penetration tests, continuity tests) is required to validate that systems and controls can handle disruptions‍. Critical systems must undergo advanced threat-led penetration testing at least annually to uncover weaknesses.
• ICT Third-Party Risk Management: Financial entities must manage risks from their third-party tech providers as part of their ICT risk strategy‍. This includes segmenting your third parties based on if they support a critical or important function and maintaining a detailed Register of Information for all ICT third-party contracts (who your vendors are, services provided, risk measures, etc.). DORA even empowers regulators with direct oversight of “critical” ICT providers, ensuring cloud or tech giants supporting the financial system meet resilience standards.
• Information Sharing: DORA encourages firms to share cyber threat intelligence and best practices with each other to collectively improve defenses. This isn’t a mandatory requirement, but it’s promoted as a way to bolster sector-wide resilience.
• ICT Service Provider Oversight: For the most important tech vendors (designated Critical Third-Party Providers), DORA sets up an oversight framework. Regulators (via “lead overseers”) can demand audits, issue recommendations, or even impose penalties up to 1% of daily turnover for non-compliance. In short, big third-party tech providers will be closely watched – and by extension, you need to closely monitor your vendors too.

In summary, DORA’s compliance obligations touch all aspects of digital operations – internal ICT governance, third-party vendor management, incident reporting, testing, and more. It’s a comprehensive checklist for operational resilience. If you need a deeper insight into the requirements, we recommend you this deep dive on DORA.

Next, let’s focus on one of the trickiest areas: third-party risk.

The Role of Third-Party Risk in DORA

Third-party ICT providers are the backbone of modern financial services – cloud hosting, payment processors, core banking software, you name it. DORA recognises this by making third-party risk management a central theme. Why? Because your operational resilience is only as strong as your weakest vendor. If a critical supplier goes down or is breached, it’s your organisation that bears the impact.

Financial firms’ growing dependence on outsourcing and cloud services has increased operational risk. As Deloitte aptly notes, while third-party partnerships bring benefits, they also “result in a corresponding increase in operational risk”. Unchecked vendor risks can lead to service disruptions, data breaches, and compliance failures. DORA addresses this by compelling firms to treat ICT third-party risk on par with internal risk – no more blind spots.

Concretely, DORA requires a strategy for ICT third-party risk as part of your overall risk framework. You must assess vendor risks regularly, ensure contracts include resilience provisions, and keep an up-to-date Register of Information on all ICT contracts. This register is essentially an inventory of who your tech providers are, the criticality of each, and key risk data – it’s crucial for transparency. Additionally, DORA’s oversight of critical third-party providers means regulators could directly audit your cloud or software providerspwc.compwc.com. That puts more onus on you to select and monitor vendors carefully.

Importantly, recent industry surveys show third-party oversight is one of the hardest DORA requirements to implement. In one study, 34% of organisations cited third-party risk oversight as their top challenge under DORA – more than any other requirement. Why is it so tough? Often, firms have limited visibility into their vendors’ operations. The sheer number of third parties (hundreds or thousands of suppliers) makes it difficult to track who’s compliant and who isn’t. DORA forces a more rigorous approach: categorising providers by criticality, obtaining assurance of their resilience (via audits or certifications), and preparing contingency plans if a key supplier fails.

This is where 3rdRisk’s platform shines. Third-party risk management has always been our specialty – and it aligns perfectly with DORA’s aims. In the next section, we’ll see how 3rdRisk helps you get a grip on vendor risk, alongside automating other DORA compliance tasks. When done right, managing third-party risk isn’t just about avoiding fines; it becomes a way to strengthen your operational resilience and build trust with regulators and customers alike.

How 3rdRisk Supports DORA Compliance

3rdRisk is designed as a one-stop-shop for risk and DORA compliance. Instead of juggling spreadsheets, emails, and siloed tools, our platform centralises everything you need for DORA. We built it to be “fast to implement and easy for internal teams and third parties to use”, as well as purpose-built for evolving regulations like DORA.

Here’s how 3rdRisk can support your DORA compliance journey:

Automating Third-Party Risk Assessments

One of the most laborious parts of DORA compliance is performing thorough risk assessments of all your vendors and ICT service providers. DORA expects you to evaluate each third party’s cybersecurity, operational resilience, data protection, etc., on a regular basis. Doing this manually for dozens or hundreds of suppliers is a nightmare for procurement and risk teams.

3rdRisk automates this process to save you time and headaches. Our platform can automatically identify and assess risks for each third-party ICT provider, covering domains like cybersecurity posture, continuity arrangements, and compliance status. And yes, 3rdRisk isusing AI if it make sense to further automate the process or provide better insights. For example, if a vendor provides cloud services, 3rdRisk will track whether they have proper certifications, robust incident response plans, and meet DORA’s standards. We use smart questionnaires and integrations to gather evidence from vendors without endless email chains. Think of it as having a “risk assessment robot” that checks your suppliers against DORA requirements.

Crucially, the 3rdRisk platform gives you deep visibility into your vendor ecosystem. You’ll see at a glance which suppliers are high risk, which ones lack certain controls, and where you might have concentration risk (too many critical services reliant on one provider). As our internal voice guide says, “See supplier risks in one place, without chasing documents.” We make it that straightforward. By automating third-party assessments, you ensure no vendor slips through the cracks, and you can demonstrate to regulators that you’re actively managing these risks.

Streamlining Incident and Risk Reporting

Under DORA, financial entities must rapidly report major ICT incidents to regulators – typically within tight deadlines (often 72 hours for significant incidents). Additionally, internal stakeholders like the board and customers may need timely updates during outages or cyber events. Preparing these reports and keeping a log of incidents is another heavy lift for compliance officers.

3rdRisk streamlines incident reporting by providing a structured incident management module. Whenever an ICT incident occurs (say a payment system outage or a cyber breach), you can log details in 3rdRisk: what happened, which services were impacted, severity classification, response actions, etc. The platform helps you categorise and track incidents in line with DORA’s criteria. It even prompts you for all required information so that nothing is missed. When it’s time to notify regulators or inform your management, 3rdRisk can generate ready-to-go reports, saving precious time during a crisis.

But it’s not just about compliance paperwork – it’s about learning from incidents. 3rdRisk consolidates incident data to highlight patterns and emerging risks. Over time, this helps your team identify weak spots and prevent repeat issues. By using one tool for incident logging and analysis, you turn reactive reporting into proactive risk management.

Furthermore, our platform integrates risk reporting into real-time dashboards. At any moment, you can pull up a dashboard to show, for example, how many vendors are DORA-compliant, how many incidents occurred this quarter, and what your overall ICT risk level is. These insights help keep your board informed and demonstrate control effectiveness to auditors. DORA compliance is much easier when you have the numbers at your fingertips instead of buried in documents.

Integration with Existing Systems

We know that our users already have numerous systems in place – from procurement databases and GRC tools to IT service management platforms. 3rdRisk plays nice with your existing tech stack. Our solution offers out-of-the-box integrations with popular systems (and an open API), so you can connect data seamlessly. For instance, if you maintain a CMDB or vendor master list elsewhere, 3rdRisk can pull that information to auto-populate your third-party register. Likewise, incident data from an IT ticketing system can flow into 3rdRisk’s incident module, avoiding duplicate data entry.

Integration is key to avoiding silos. When 3rdRisk is plugged into your ecosystem, it becomes a central hub that collects and aggregates risk information from everywhere. This means no more switching between multiple systems to gather evidence for DORA – as our platform promises, “no more switching between multiple systems” to manage risk and compliance. The result? Less manual work for your team and a more accurate, up-to-date picture of your operational resilience.

By automating third-party assessments and incident reporting, and by integrating with your current tools, 3rdRisk significantly reduces your DORA compliance workload. What used to require countless spreadsheets and emails can now be handled in a few clicks.

Turning Compliance into a Strategic Advantage

It’s easy to view DORA compliance as just another regulatory burden – a box-ticking exercise to avoid fines. But with the right approach, compliance can become a strategic advantage. Remember that DORA’s end goal is not paperwork; it’s operational resilience. Financial firms that truly embed resilience will not only satisfy regulators but also gain a competitive edge in reliability and trust.

Instead of doing the bare minimum, forward-looking CISOs and risk officers are leveraging DORA as a catalyst to upgrade their processes. By investing in stronger cyber defenses, better vendor management, and robust continuity plans, you’re effectively future-proofing your business. As PwC put it, the new resilience framework is “not only a challenge, but also an opportunity to future-proof your business.” Firms that get this right can reduce downtime, protect their customers, and react faster to threats – all of which have direct business benefits.

Compliance technology like 3rdRisk plays a big role in this transformation. When you use 3rdRisk to streamline DORA compliance, you’re also gaining real-time insight into your risk posture. This enables data-driven decisions: maybe you’ll discover a particular vendor is too risky and decide to switch providers (preventing a potential disaster), or you’ll identify gaps in your incident response playbook and fix them before a crisis hits. Over time, these improvements strengthen your institution’s resilience beyond the regulatory checklist. You end up not just compliant, but genuinely more secure and reliable.

Moreover, being proactive on DORA can enhance your reputation with regulators and clients. Regulators are likely to view compliant firms as lower risk, which could mean smoother supervisory exams. Clients and partners, meanwhile, prefer businesses that demonstrate resilience – nobody wants their bank or insurer knocked offline due to a cyber incident. By excelling at operational resilience, you build trust in the market. In procurement terms, compliance becomes a selling point rather than a cost center.

The bottom line: Embracing DORA with the help of tools like 3rdRisk can turn an obligation into an opportunity. You ensure stability and continuity of services (operational resilience) in an increasingly volatile digital landscape, which is a huge strategic win. Now, let’s wrap up with how 3rdRisk can partner with you on this journey.

Conclusion

DORA compliance doesn’t have to overwhelm your teams. With the right support, financial institutions can meet the new standards efficiently and confidently. 3rdRisk’s platform is that support system. According to a study from Verdantix it is a clear, human-centric solution that automates heavy tasks, provides visibility, and guides you through DORA’s requirements step by step. We’ve helped compliance and procurement leaders turn DORA from a source of stress into a structured process that actually strengthens operational resilience.

By using 3rdRisk, you gain time back for your team, reduce the risk of errors or omissions, and tap into expert-curated templates aligned with DORA. The result is simplified compliance that satisfies regulators and protects your organisation’s critical operations. More importantly, you build a resilience culture that benefits your whole business.

Ready to turn DORA compliance into a strategic advantage for your firm? We invite you to explore our platform and see how it can work for you. Feel free to check out our in-depth DORA compliance solution page for more details or get in touch for a demo. Remember, compliance is not just about avoiding penalties – it’s about empowering your organisation to thrive even in the face of disruptions. With 3rdRisk by your side, you can achieve both. Let’s make DORA compliance simpler, together.

Read more: What stakeholders ask about DORA and how to respond