DORA and Business Continuity: the new pillars for banks and insurance companies

The context: why finance cannot afford fragility

Operational continuity is now one of the essential conditions for the banking, financial, and insurance world. A prolonged downtime or a cyberattack that interrupts digital services, even for a short period, not only leads to immediate economic losses but also undermines customer trust and opens the door to regulatory, reputational, and market consequences.

According to IBM 2023 data, the average cost of an operational outage in the financial sector exceeds $5.9 million, compared to a global average of $4.45 million. But beyond the economic figure, the real critical issue is the erosion of trust, which in the financial market is a fundamental element.

In this scenario comes the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), a European regulation that, for the first time, clearly states that operational resilience and Business Continuity are not an option but a regulatory obligation.

DORA: not a technical rule, but a cultural revolution

The DORA regulation, which came into force in January 2023, is reaching full regulatory application during 2025.
The goal of DORA is clear: to make the European financial sector capable of withstanding, reacting, and recovering from any form of digital disruption.
The key points are as follows:

• Continuous and data-driven ICT Risk Management
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery as structural processes
• Timely and standardized incident reporting
• Mandatory and documentable operational resilience testing
• Third-party provider management (ICT outsourcers and cloud providers)

What is often underestimated is that DORA goes beyond regulatory compliance: it requires organizations to adopt a paradigm shift, moving from a reactive approach to a proactive and measurable resilience culture.

Business Continuity: the new benchmark of reliability

For a long time, Business Continuity was seen as a simple checklist: emergency procedures, disaster recovery plans, and perhaps a few periodic tests. With DORA, however, it becomes the beating heart of digital resilience, introducing new obligations but also new strategies to ensure Business Continuity:

• maintaining constant trust from customers and partners even during crises,
• minimizing the economic and reputational impact of incidents,
• strengthening the competitive position in a market where reliability is a deciding factor.

In other words, compliance is not just a regulatory obligation but an essential condition to be credible and competitive in the market.

The market’s challenges: the gap between rules and reality

Many banks and financial institutions remain tied to manual and fragmented processes that not only slow down operations but also prevent a clear and updated vision of their ecosystem.
Asset, application, and dependency mapping is often incomplete or outdated, creating shadow zones where “phantom” risks can lurk.
This approach slows responses during incidents and makes it difficult to anticipate or manage crisis scenarios.
Moreover, resilience is often addressed with a partial vision: IT functions focus on system availability, while business functions focus on operational continuity, without a common language or integrated model that unites the two perspectives. This siloed approach limits coordination and prevents realistic impact assessments across the entire value chain.
Finally, compliance is often treated as a mere formality. Many institutions are more concerned with demonstrating compliance to supervisory authorities than with transforming regulatory requirements into real levers for organizational improvement. The result is a “cosmetic resilience” that avoids fines but does not ensure the ability to withstand and recover from critical events.
This approach may satisfy regulators in the short term but offers no guarantee to the market.

The paradigm shift: resilience as a strategic asset

The real step forward happens when Business Continuity stops being seen as a cost or a regulatory burden and is instead recognized as a strategic lever for competitiveness.
In this perspective, the data-driven approach becomes central, with digital twin models enabling the simulation of crisis scenarios and the planning of mitigation actions based on concrete and verifiable data.
In addition, the ability to perform what-if analyses real-time simulations of the impact that threats and vulnerabilities could have on critical processes allows organizations to manage disruptions proactively, anticipating potential scenarios and consequences and turning uncertainty into operational awareness.
Another key element is cross-visibility, meaning the integrated view of IT, OT, and IoT indispensable for consistently managing complex banking infrastructures, made up of multiple technology domains and distributed devices across wide territories (think of ATM networks, POS devices, and cloud payment systems).
Without a true unified perspective, resilience efforts risk remaining fragmented and ineffective.
Finally, the ability to produce documentable evidence becomes a competitive advantage not only for audits but also for market stakeholders. Demonstrating the solidity and reliability of operational continuity strengthens the trust of customers, partners, and investors, transforming resilience into a real asset of value and reputation.

Those who adopt this approach will turn compliance into a recognized mark of reliability, enhancing reputation and investor trust.

From regulatory compliance to competitive advantage

DORA is not just regulation; it is an opportunity to redefine the foundations of trust in the European financial sector.
Banks, financial institutions, and insurance companies that limit themselves to “ticking boxes” risk remaining vulnerable and unconvincing, even if formally compliant.

Those who instead invest in real, advanced, integrated, and measurable Business Continuity will gain a unique positioning: being perceived as reliable, resilient, and competitive in an increasingly crowded and selective market.