Every financial entity operating in the European Union must comply with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). DORA focuses on whether systems can withstand, respond to, and recover from ICT-related disruptions and whether this can be demonstrated with evidence.
For engineering, security, and risk teams, this introduces a practical requirement. Operational resilience must be observable in live systems, continuously tested, and traceable over time.
This article explains DORA’s technical expectations and how Aikido Security supports their implementation.
TL;DR
DORA requires EU financial entities to demonstrate operational resilience in practice. Aikido Security supports the technical execution of DORA by providing continuous vulnerability visibility, exploitability validation, resilience testing, and compliance-ready evidence across code, cloud, and runtime environments.
What DORA Is About
DORA has applied since January 17, 2025 to banks, insurers, investment firms, payment providers, and other regulated financial entities in the EU.
It was introduced to address repeated ICT disruptions caused by software vulnerabilities, third-party failures, and inconsistent incident handling across member states. DORA establishes a single, sector-specific framework focused on measurable outcomes.
Regulators expect organizations to show that they can:
- Detect ICT incidents quickly
- Respond and recover effectively
- Provide evidence that controls work in operational conditions
The Five Pillars of DORA
From a technical perspective, DORA is structured around five pillars:
- ICT Risk Management: Knowing what systems you run, where your risks are, and how you manage them day to day.
- Incident Reporting: Detecting incidents quickly and reporting them within strict regulatory timelines.
- Digital Operational Resilience Testing: Regularly testing your systems' ability to withstand and recover from disruptions.
- ICT Third-party Risk Management: Understanding and managing the risks introduced by vendors, suppliers, and dependencies.
- Information Sharing: Sharing threat intelligence to strengthen resilience across the financial ecosystem.
Each pillar has direct implications for how systems are built, monitored, and tested.
What DORA Means for Engineering Teams
Secure development practices
Article 9(4)(e) requires organizations to document security practices, track vulnerabilities, and demonstrate how resilience is built into software delivery. Security controls must be integrated into development workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
Dependency accountability
Under Article 28, third-party and open-source dependencies are fully in scope. If a dependency causes disruption or exposure, responsibility remains with the financial entity. Teams must know which dependencies are in use, where they run, and how quickly issues can be addressed.
Traceability and evidence
Engineering teams must be able to show what was deployed, when it went live, which security checks ran, and who approved the change. Build logs, version control, and security tooling must produce an auditable trail.
What DORA Means for Security and Risk Teams
Continuous risk visibility
DORA expects ongoing awareness of what is running in production, which vulnerabilities exist, and which risks are exploitable at any given time. Periodic assessments are insufficient.
Automated vulnerability handling
Manual tracking does not scale. Detection, prioritization, and remediation timelines must be supported by automated systems with clear ownership.
Documentation aligned with reality
When incidents occur, organizations must show when the issue was detected, how it was assessed, who handled it, and how quickly it was resolved. Evidence must reflect actual system behavior.
How DORA Differs From Other Frameworks
DORA does not replace ISO 27001, NIS2, or SOC 2. It introduces stricter, sector-specific requirements focused on operational outcomes.
DORA acts as lex specialis, meaning if DORA and NIS2 conflict, for instance, DORA wins. The rules are tailored specifically to financial sector risks and are stricter than what you'd see in other regulatory frameworks.
Why DORA Compliance Is Difficult in Practice
Large and fast-moving codebases make it hard to track every change and approval. Modern applications rely on hundreds of dependencies, often without clear visibility into deployment and exposure. Security tooling is fragmented, producing data across multiple systems that must be correlated during audits.
How Aikido Supports DORA's Technical Requirements
Aikido Security is an AI-powered platform that centralizes security visibility across source code, dependencies, cloud infrastructure, containers, and runtime environments.
Aikido does not replace governance frameworks, incident response procedures or regulatory reporting. It provides the technical signals and evidence those processes rely on.
Digital Operational Resilience Testing and Aikido Security
DORA requires organizations to test operational resilience under realistic conditions. Identifying vulnerabilities alone is insufficient.
Aikido supports resilience testing through:
- Continuous DAST on live applications
- Container and Kubernetes security testing
- Aikido Attack, which uses AI-driven penetration testing to simulate realistic attack paths and validate exploitability
- AutoFix and Auto Triage to reduce remediation time and track recovery effectiveness
Supporting DORA in Practice
DORA requires demonstrable operational resilience supported by evidence. Aikido Security provides the technical visibility, testing capabilities, and audit-ready data that help organizations meet these expectations across live systems.
Governance, incident response, and regulatory engagement remain essential. Aikido ensures these processes are grounded in accurate, up-to-date technical data.
You might also like:
- Why European Companies Choose Aikido as Their Cybersecurity Partner
- Complying with the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) using Aikido Security
- How Aikido and Deloitte Are Bringing Developer-First Security to Enterprise
- How to Comply With the UK Cybersecurity & Resilience Bill: A Practical Guide for Modern Engineering Teams
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