Preparing for DORA: Strengthening Your Operational Resilience with IGEL

According to the SANS Institute, ransomware grew by 73% in 2023. While these and other digital threats continue to evolve in frequency and sophistication, attackers remain undeterred by international borders, driving the need for legislative action.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a legislative initiative established to support the European Digital Finance Strategy, which encourages innovation while ensuring strong security and protection for consumers and businesses. It requires financial entities to enhance their ICT risk management, incident response, and third-party risk management strategies, ensuring the resilience of services critical to the financial system.

The act will go into effect across the European Union (EU) on January 17, 2025, marking a major milestone in financial regulation. Due to technology’s global impact on the financial services sector, CISOs, compliance officers, and risk management teams outside the EU must prepare now for DORA’s implementation.

IGEL’s Preventative Security Model™ and DORA

At IGEL, we recognize the significance of DORA and its influence on our partners and customers. The IGEL Preventative Security Model supports DORA’s operational resiliency requirements. It helps financial institutions comply with the legislation across several key areas, from ICT risk management to incident response, through its key components that include:

• IGEL OS, a Linux-based secure operating system designed to deliver critical business applications across diverse environments, including Enterprise Browsers, SaaS, DaaS, and VDI.
• IGEL OS removes the vulnerabilities targeted by bad actors through the Preventative Security Model core, these include:
  • A Read-only OS that cannot be altered by malware
  • No local data storage prevents leaks generated from lost or stolen devices
  • Trusted application platform ensures the integrity of the endpoint OS through UEFI secure boot, enabling fast recovery from attempted cyber-attacks.
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), Single Sign-On (SSO), Security Service Edge (SSE), and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) are enhanced through partnerships with leading vendors, including Citrix, Imprivata, Microsoft, Okta, Ping Identity, and Omnissa. This approach ensures that security is applied consistently across all endpoints and supports essential elements of the Zero Trust framework, including users, devices, applications, workloads, networks, and visibility and analytics.
  • A modular design and a much smaller attack surface than a traditional endpoint OS ensure that the end user has only what they need to be productive.
• Partnerships with HP, LG, and Lenovo enable IGEL to deliver IGEL OS on factory-shipped devices that are secure out-of-the-box and promote operational resilience and compliance with Zero Trust architecture.
• Integration with enterprise SaaS and DaaS solutions, including Citrix, Microsoft and Omnissa, ensures end-to-end security for third-party applications. This helps financial institutions mitigate third-party ICT risks as required by DORA and achieve compliance across complex IT environments
• IGEL’s Business Continuity service offers a robust recovery option for devices that must run on Windows, ensuring operational resilience during incidents. This ensures that financial institutions can meet DORA’s demand for continuous service availability, even in environments where IGEL OS may not be used on every device.
• Disaster recovery licensing provides a clean boot into IGEL OS via an external UD Pocket or second partition, allowing financial institutions to recover compromised Windows devices rapidly. This solution is critical for meeting DORA’s requirements for timely response and recovery from ICT incidents
• Operational Resilience Testing helps organizations comply with DORA’s requirements for regular testing of ICT systems and recovery plans. This service ensures that financial institutions are fully prepared to handle potential disruptions.
• ISO27001 Certification provides a layer of assurance for financial institutions by adhering to internationally recognized standards for information security management, helping financial organizations demonstrate compliance with DORA’s stringent requirements for third-party risk management.

Upcoming event showcases how to reduce risk and comply with DORA

Because DORA places significant demands on financial institutions to strengthen ICT risk management, enhance incident response, and ensure third-party service providers maintain the same level of operational resilience, IGEL is teaming with Amulet Hotkey and Island – The Enterprise Browser to present “EUC Endpoint Security Showcase for Financial Services.”

During the event, which will be held November 14 in Manchester, UK, attendees will learn how their organization can reduce risk, enhance its cybersecurity posture, and comply with DORA by diversifying away from a single endpoint OS strategy, thus avoiding a single point of failure across the estate.

Space is limited, so register today by clicking here. For more information on IGEL for Business Continuity, click here.