The Digital Operational Resilience Act, commonly known as DORA, is an EU regulation designed to strengthen the financial sector’s resilience against information and communication technology failures, cyber incidents, and third-party technology risks. It seeks to help financial entities continue critical services during disruption and recover in a controlled manner afterwards [3].
DORA matters because digital services are now integral to banking, payments, insurance, investment, and other financial activities. Applications, data centres, cloud services, networks, and external providers are deeply interconnected. That connectivity creates efficiency, but it also means that a single technology failure can have broad operational consequences.
The European Commission explains that DORA empowers it to adopt delegated and implementing acts specifying how competent authorities and market participants should comply with the regulation [3]. The framework covers ICT risk management, incident management and reporting, resilience testing, information sharing, and ICT third-party risk management.
DORA should not be treated as a narrow technical-security standard. The management body needs to understand critical or important functions, approve risk priorities, oversee key providers, and follow remediation results. When DORA is designed as an enterprise resilience programme connecting technology, business continuity, and customer trust, it produces a more durable outcome.