In today’s digital landscape, the battle against cyber threats rages on. NIS2 is at the forefront of this battle, aiming to protect European government organisations and operators of essential infrastructure from evolving security challenges.
With the compliance deadline lurking around the corner, organisations that fall under the scope of NIS2 can no longer afford to delay. To assist you in kickstarting your NIS2 compliance journey, this blog focuses on five NIS2 key requirements of the directive and provides actionable insights on how to address them.
The current threat and regulatory landscape pressures organisations to establish capabilities to prepare for and manage cyber threats effectively and efficiently. NIS2, for example, focuses on improving the security of networks and information systems across Europe and includes requirements for organisations to implement appropriate technical measures to prevent, detect and respond to security incidents.
In order to align with the NIS2 directive, organisations must implement effective processes aimed at identifying and managing risk. Let’s zoom in on some of the key focus areas for NIS2 compliance and share actionable tips to ensure conformity.
Five Top NIS2 Requirements
In this guide, we’re going to discuss the following five requirements of NIS2:
- Identity Management, Authentication, and Access
- Data Security
- Quickly Detect and Respond to Cyber Incidents
- Continuous Security Monitoring
- Analyse, Mitigate, Improve
1. Identity Management, Authentication, and Access
Identity Access Management (IAM) has always been a core component of cybersecurity. Traditionally, IAM was seen as an IT responsibility, one that enables the enterprise. Looking at how NIS2 defines cybersecurity and outlines how an organisation’s supply chain affects its cybersecurity posture, this traditional approach to Identity Management seems to be outdated.
As security controls extend beyond the organisation’s boundaries, businesses need to be in control of more identities than just their own. They need to cope with an indefinite number of identities and must address the complexity of managing access across the supply chain.
In other words, mainstream access control concepts will have to be adapted to cope with the supply chain integration. As a result, access policy management and zero trust principles will have to be added to the security toolkit, requiring new infrastructure and policy management.
2. Data Security
Data is not just a crucial asset; it is the heart and soul of every organisation’s operations. With data distributed across multiple clouds and numerous devices, gaining visibility into the types of information that float around within your organisation’s infrastructure becomes challenging.
NIS2 encourages organisations to outline a well-defined classification framework to identify and apply suitable protections based on data criticality and risk. By urging organisations to adopt a holistic strategy that addresses the multifaceted challenges of data protection, the directive enables them to improve compliance while better orienting their security efforts around priority data assets.
3. Quickly Detect and Respond to Cyber Incidents
When looking to comply with NIS2, organisations must demonstrate robust security measures and incident response capabilities. In a world where competition to attract cybersecurity talent is fierce, a rapid and cost-effective approach to assessing cybersecurity expertise is to rely on Managed Extended Detection and Response services (MXDR) – a security solution that combines outsourced human expertise and advanced cyber technology.
MXDR empowers organisations to have early warning systems in place to detect incidents and emergencies that could affect their critical infrastructure while giving internal teams the time and bandwidth to focus on in-company issues.
4. Continuous Security Monitoring
Cyber threats come in various forms, each bringing their own magnitude of impact. To decrease the likelihood of a successful attack, NIS2 urges organisations to implement an effective monitoring system that can detect intrusions, suspicious activities and alert relevant stakeholders when necessary.
Continuously monitoring network traffic, endpoints and cloud environments, helps organisations detect malicious activities. By extending the visibility to a wider environment than just the endpoint, MXDR provides automatic detection and correlation across security layers by employing external analysts to take on the time-consuming task of 24x7x365 monitoring.
Analyse, Mitigate, Improve
To strengthen and streamline security requirements, NIS2 imposes organisations to investigate past and ongoing attacks to identify possible vulnerabilities and determine how their systems were compromised. MXDR streamlines NIS2 compliance efforts by providing comprehensive visibility into security events.
By empowering simplified, detailed reporting, MXDR permits to process and analyse this data and better understand the motivators and behaviours of threat actors and so mitigate future attacks effectively.
Whitepaper: Are You Ready for NIS2?
Kick Start Your Journey Towards NIS2 Compliance
To take your first step towards NIS2 compliance, we have composed a whitepaper to help you gain a greater understanding of the NIS2 regulations. Dive into why the upcoming directive is relevant to your organisation and what are the first steps you should be taking.
How CWSI can help you on your NIS2 journey
When it comes to NIS2, you need an experienced partner.
For more than a decade, CWSI has been instrumental in enabling our customers to thrive within the continually evolving threat landscape . Our team of security experts have extensive experience and apply strict security policies and processes from our deep knowledge and understanding of the forthcoming NIS2 Directive.
CWSI can assist you in assessing if your organisation falls within the scope of the NIS2 Directive. For each key requirement of the directive, CWSI can help discover and document your current state of preparedness and provide you with an individual roadmap to achieving NIS2 compliance.
Holding three Microsoft Security Specialisations in Identity and Access Management, Information Protection and Governance and Threat Protection, CWSI serves as an expert in these crucial NIS2 areas – Identity, Data Governance, Security Threat Protection and Response, Education and Awareness and Security Policy.
It’s our people and their expertise that ensure that your business can close the gap between its current security state and compliance.
Contact Us
Get in contact today to begin your journey to NIS2 compliance:
Resources
Our Voice
Talking NIS2 with Microsoft.
Tune into Paul Conaty, discussing with Microsoft’s Nikoleta Gamanova and Tomás Casasco, the hot topic of upcoming the NIS2 directive that will come into national law on October 17th 2024, bringing a set of common standards that will affect a minimum of 180,000 European organisations across 18 sectors.
White Paper
A Guide to a Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC)
A CSOC service proactively monitors an organisation’s estate and receives and analyses large amounts of real-time data to gain visibility of activities across this environment. Download our Guide today to discover the key elements and benefits of a Security Operations Centre.
Our Voice
How Can Businesses Protect Against 99% of Cyber Attacks?
There is a way to protect against 99% of these attacks, the answer is Cyber Hygiene. Cyber hygiene is the practice of following basic security principles and habits to reduce the risk of cyberattacks.
