Managing Digital Resilience: Preparing for DORA Regulations 

The digital landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) represents a critical turning point for financial entities. This regulation demands a comprehensive approach to maintaining robust IT infrastructure and operational resilience, challenging organizations to fundamentally rethink their technological strategies.

The DORA Imperative: Comprehensive Proactive IT Management

DORA mandates a holistic approach to digital operational resilience. Financial organizations must now develop robust Information and Communication Technology (ICT) risk management frameworks that go beyond traditional IT support. The regulation requires organizations to implement stringent security controls, ensure continuous monitoring, enable rapid incident response, and maintain comprehensive testing of IT systems.

Comprehensive “Real-Time IT Visibility“ has become a cornerstone of digital resilience. Organizations must now develop advanced capabilities to continuously monitor systems, track device performance, and implement real-time infrastructure monitoring. This approach allows businesses to identify potential vulnerabilities and risk points before they escalate into significant challenges.

Digital Employee Experience as a Resilience Tool

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) has emerged as a critical component of operational resilience. Leading organizations recognize that technological experience directly impacts overall business performance. According to Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools, “By 2026, 50% of digital workplace leaders will have established a DEX strategy and tool, up from 30% in 2024.”   

With a robust DEX strategy comes the ability to respond to incidents more efficiently. For example, one Lakeside customer with 100,000+ employees identified a widespread issue with its electronic signage. It resolved this issue using SysTrack data, saving hundreds of man-hours and enhancing customer experience. With SysTrack, the customer could run natural language queries to quickly and easily pull real-time, actionable insights from all their endpoints and make war room operations even more efficient.  

At its core, DEX is about ensuring that the IT environment facilitates productivity rather than hindering it. Recently, a Lakeside solution architect used a fitting analogy to describe what it fundamentally means to employees to have a great digital experience: “If you’re in a room, and the air temperature is right, you don’t really notice it. But if it’s too hot or too cold, you immediately notice. Similarly, when IT systems are running smoothly, employees are able to perform their tasks without disruption, often without even thinking about the IT systems behind the scenes. But when things go wrong — be it a slow system, faulty application, or poor network performance — the IT issue becomes painfully obvious. Such disruptions can slow down employees, frustrate them, and reduce their overall productivity.”

The resilience of an IT organization is reflected in its ability to prevent and quickly address these issues. Take for example the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage. Lakeside was able to help its customers in this major incident management by using the real-time and historic endpoint data. Within hours of the incident, Lakeside developed a dashboard specific to the CrowdStrike outage to help customers understand the magnitude of the impact, triage repair of high-priority systems, and monitor the progress of remediation at scale. 

Preparing for DORA: A Strategic Approach

Successful DORA compliance requires a multifaceted strategy that encompasses multiple aspects of organizational technology management. Organizations must develop comprehensive “Real-Time IT Visibility“ that provides a clear view of their entire technological ecosystem.

With this expanded visibility, IT can start building up greater resilience on a number of fronts, from security threats to supply chain disruptions or hybrid work to sustainability initiatives.

DORA represents more than a regulatory requirement—it is an opportunity to fundamentally transform IT operations. By embracing proactive digital resilience, organizations can enhance their operational efficiency, reduce technological risks, improve overall business continuity, and create more robust, adaptive digital environments.

Financial entities should prioritize a comprehensive approach to DORA preparation. Conducting a comprehensive DORA readiness assessment provides a clear understanding of current technological capabilities. Developing a detailed ICT risk management strategy helps organizations proactively address potential challenges. Investing in advanced monitoring and resilience technologies ensures ongoing technological resilience.

By taking a proactive, strategic approach to digital operational resilience, organizations can not only meet DORA requirements but turn regulatory compliance into a significant competitive advantage.

How can SysTrack help?

Lakeside Software offers SysTrack: the only AI-driven digital employee experience platform. For organizations ready to use data insights to build resilience – not only for DORA compliance but for IT transformation – SysTrack is the only solution that offers real-time IT visibility across the entire IT estate.