Zero Trust Security in Enterprise Java: What it is and How to Implement it
Cybersecurity isn’t just about building walls, fortresses, moats or any other external barrier anymore. Nowadays, it’s important to check […]
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is changing the cybersecurity and regulatory compliance landscape for financial institutions in the EU. In effect, DORA is now binding, with regulators shifting from guidance to active enforcement. For developers building or maintaining financial applications, understanding DORA’s requirements and how to meet them is essential.
In this post, we’ll break down what DORA is, why it’s important and what it means for developers. You’ll also get a glimpse on how to meet the regulatory requirements with your enterprise Java applications.
DORA is a EU regulation aimed at ensuring financial entities can withstand and recover from ICT-related disruptions. In plain terms: if you’re building applications for a financial service provider, bank or fintech company, your code, runtime and deployment practices must now meet new standards for resilience, transparency and incident response. As DORA applies to everything from uptime and data integrity to monitoring and secure logging, the regulation fundamentally changes how financial applications must be designed, built and maintained, with direct consequences for both technical teams and the organizations they support. Failing to comply can mean severe penalties and loss of trust.
Why is DORA needed and why is it so important to protect applications used by financial organizations?
Over the past decade, financial institutions have become deeply dependent on digital technologies to deliver their services, manage data and interact with customers. This digital transformation has brought enormous benefits in terms of efficiency and accessibility, but it has also created new vulnerabilities and risks that traditional financial regulations were not designed to address. In particular, the financial sector alone fights off a staggering 141% more high-severity vulnerabilities per app compared with other industries.
In addition, the first sector-specific analysis of cyber threats targeting the European finance sector from the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) highlights critical statistics across banking and financial institutions. Key findings from incidents that took place from January 2023 to June 2024 include:
These findings clearly demonstrate that the European banking sector remains a prime target for cyber threats. DORA was introduced as a direct response to the rapidly evolving digital landscape in the financial sector and the rising tide of cyber threats that accompany it. In effect, the regulation’s mandates for risk management, incident reporting and third-party oversight are essential for building operational resilience and safeguarding the financial system.
Cyber incidents in the financial sector have broad and complex consequences, affecting operational integrity, financial health, regulatory compliance and customer trust. Key consequences include:
The far reaching issues that banks and financial institutions can face as a result of a cyber attack make strong operational resilience a must for the applications used within the sector. Thus, developers should develop and update their solutions accordingly. Knowing what tools, technologies and capabilities to look for is extremely beneficial.
Steve Millidge, CEO at Payara Services, comments: “As financial institutions adapt to DORA’s stringent resilience standards, it’s critical to recognize that middleware represents a key element to build robust, compliance cybersecurity measures. Securing the application runtime layer ensures that the applications and systems organizations depend on are simultaneously performant and trustworthy. By partnering with a customer-centric vendor that is at the forefront of middleware security, such as Payara Services, IT teams can confidently align with evolving regulatory requirements while strengthening the resilience of their infrastructures.”
Want to go deeper or share key insights with your manager? We created a free whitepaper for you. It covers data protection legislation and standards for financial institutions as well as how to align your systems with DORA. The document also looks at how Payara Platform Enterprise can help development teams working on enterprise Java application for fintech and other key software as well as how it can help C-suite professionals meet regulatory requirements.
Download your free copy now to drive DORA compliance and protect your enterprise Java applications.
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