Although meeting these demands can feel like a daunting task, there's a smart way to tackle NIS2 compliance: vulnerability automation. In this blog we explain how you can actively identify and address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, using an automated and repeatable process.
What is NIS2 & why does it matter for compliance?
The Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS 2), is a European Union directive designed to bolster cybersecurity across member states. It expands the scope of the original NIS Directive, covering more sectors and imposing stricter requirements for risk management, incident reporting, and overall cybersecurity practices. NIS2 aims to harmonize cybersecurity standards across the EU, enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure, and increase accountability for organizations' security measures, ultimately creating a safer digital environment.
Who must comply with NIS2?
NIS2 applies to medium-sized and large companies and entities that provide important services to the European Union. This includes companies in many sectors, including energy, healthcare, banking, and digital infrastructure. You are required to comply with NIS2 if your organization:
- Provides critical services or infrastructure
- Operates in sectors that are considered critical or highly critical
- Provides digital services like cloud computing, online marketplaces, or search engines
- Supplies goods and services to a covered EU entity (this applies globally)
What are the challenges for NIS2 compliance?
- Lack of central visibility: With an average of 50+ security tools for a mid-size enterprise, it’s difficult to understand total risk exposure and ensure compliance across the entire IT infrastructure without spending hundreds of hours of manual work aggregating, correlating, and analyzing complex data.
- Managing supply chain security: Ensuring all suppliers and third-party vendors meet NIS2 requirements can be challenging, especially when dealing with complex supply chains.
- Resource constraints: Implementing NIS2 may require significant investments in personnel, technology, and training, which can be a challenge for smaller organizations.
Continuous monitoring: NIS2 compliance is not a one-time activity; organizations need to establish ongoing monitoring and improvement processes to adapt to evolving threats.
The role of automated vulnerability management
Using automated vulnerability management is the best way to overcome many of the challenges to NIS2 compliance and significantly boost your security posture. Automated vulnerability management provides you with:
- Continuous monitoring
Unlike traditional vulnerability assessments, which are often periodic and manual, automated systems provide continuous monitoring of your network. This ensures that vulnerabilities are identified and flagged quickly, allowing for swift remediation.
- Increased efficiency
Automating the vulnerability management process eliminates a lot of manual analysis and correlation, allowing your IT team to quickly understand where their most critical vulnerabilities are and focus their efforts on getting them remediated as fast as possible.
- Measurable security posture and SLAs
By generating comprehensive reports that document your security posture and SLAs over time, you can demonstrate that adequate processes and measures are in place to meet NIS2 compliance. The reports serve as vital evidence during compliance audits, showcasing your performance and commitment to safeguarding network and information systems.
- Proactive risk management
One of the core principles of NIS2 is proactive risk management. Automated vulnerability management aligns with this principle by identifying potential weaknesses so you can fix them before attackers can exploit them. This proactive approach not only aids compliance but also enhances your organization's overall security resilience.
- Scalability and adaptability
As your organization grows and evolves, so too will your IT infrastructure and the associated risks. Automated vulnerability management is scalable, allowing you to adjust the scope of vulnerability management as needed. Additionally, these tools are adaptable, frequently updating to address new vulnerabilities as they emerge.
DataGuard and Mondoo: Automated vulnerability management and NIS2 compliance
DataGuard and Mondoo have teamed up to bring you governance, security, and automated vulnerability management all in one platform. This combination makes it significantly easier for organizations to achieve NIS2 compliance.
DataGuard is an industry-leading risk governance platform that unifies security, compliance, and governance in a single solution. DataGuard helps organizations manage their data security by identifying potential risks, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations, and establishing clear governance practices to mitigate those risks.
DataGuard leverages Mondoo to automate IT asset discovery and vulnerability management in their platform. By unifying governance and security under one roof, the DataGuard platform provides customers with real-time risk insights, automated compliance, and streamlined remediation—ensuring alignment with NIS2 and many other regulatory frameworks.
DataGuard and Mondoo help you meet the following cybersecurity measures required by NIS2:
- Incident handling: Establishing comprehensive incident response plans with clear procedures for detecting, analyzing, and responding to security incidents promptly
- Incident reporting: Implementing mechanisms to report significant security incidents to relevant authorities in a timely manner
- Business continuity planning: Developing and maintaining plans to ensure business operations can continue during a cyber incident
- Network security: Implementing robust network security measures to protect against unauthorized access and cyberattacks
- Vulnerability management: Actively identifying and patching vulnerabilities in systems and software promptly
- Data security: Implementing appropriate measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of sensitive data
- Access control: Using strict access control measures, including strong authentication methods like multi-factor authentication to limit unauthorized access
- Supply chain security: Assessing and managing cybersecurity risks posed by SaaS providers
- Continuous risk assessment: Perform regular risk assessments to identify and prioritize potential cyber threats against your infrastructure and data
Beyond compliance: The benefits of a secure posture and optimized resources
While avoiding fines is a primary driver for NIS2 compliance, vulnerability automation offers benefits that extend beyond simply ticking boxes. By proactively identifying and fixing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of a successful attack. If you were to be breached, the fewer vulnerabilities there are in your environment, the less an attacker can accomplish—which greatly reduces risk to your business.
By automating processes that are complicated and labor intensive, such as knowing which vulnerabilities need to be prioritized, human error is kept to a minimum. By eliminating hundreds of hours of manual work, the workload on the security team is significantly reduced, allowing them to focus on higher value tasks and further improve the organization’s security posture.
Investing in vulnerability automation is not just about meeting regulatory requirements; it's about building a robust cybersecurity foundation and increasing efficiency. It's the smart way to tackle NIS2 and protect your organization from threats, while reducing the workload on your security team.
Learn more
Sign up for a demo today to see how Mondoo and DataGuard can help you achieve NIS2 compliance and boost your security posture.
