European regulation does not introduce the risk, but it requires organisations to prove they can manage it.

In the previous articles of this series, we analysed the global landscape through the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 and the Spanish 2025 INCIBE report. Both pointed to the same conclusion: cyber risk is now systemic and operational.

With NIS2 and DORA, that diagnosis becomes a concrete requirement: organisations must demonstrate real capability to manage, respond to and recover from cyber incidents.

From policy to operating model

Many organisations already have policies, plans and control frameworks in place. The challenge is no longer documentation, but execution.

NIS2 requires:

  • Structured risk management processes.
  • Effective governance of critical third parties and suppliers.
  • Timely and traceable incident reporting.

DORA, within the financial sector, goes further:

  • Regular operational resilience testing.
  • Formal ICT risk management frameworks.
  • Oversight of critical technology providers.
  • Demonstrable recovery capabilities.

The key shift is that declaring controls is no longer enough; organisations must prove they work under pressure.

Where friction usually appears

In real environments, weaknesses often emerge around:

  • Limited end-to-end visibility across systems and dependencies.
  • Excessive architectural concentration on a single provider.
  • Fragmented incident management processes.
  • Business continuity plans that are rarely tested.
  • Operational dependency on third parties without continuous assessment.

At this point, resilience stops being a strategic concept and becomes a daily operational discipline.

Architectures designed to degrade, not collapse

Operational resilience does not mean avoiding every failure. It means designing systems that can absorb disruption without compromising essential continuity.

This requires:

  • Segmentation and reduced exposure surface.
  • Proactive monitoring and early detection.
  • Tested recovery procedures.
  • Real governance over the technology supply chain.
  • Portable design and reduced unnecessary dependencies.

At TeraLevel, we often see that the issue is not the technology itself, but how it is operated day to day. Compliance may trigger the change, but sustainable resilience depends on architecture, observability and operational discipline.

Conclusion

NIS2 and DORA do not introduce artificial complexity. They formalise an existing reality: cyber resilience is a structural attribute of the organisation.

Those who align architecture, operations and governance under a coherent model will be better prepared for an environment where incidents are no longer isolated events, but systemic disruptions.

Compliance can be the starting point. Operational capability is the real objective.