DORA Year Two Assessment: SOC Visibility Gaps Expose EU Financial Sector to Undetected Cyber Risks

When the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) became enforceable across the European Union in January 2025, it triggered an administrative sprint. Financial entities spent the first year establishing risk governance, assessing third-party service providers, updating contract clauses, and documenting incident escalation workflows.

Now in its second year, the harder part of DORA is determining whether SOCs can actually see the attack. Compliance checkboxes from Year One do not guarantee detection capabilities. The regulatory focus has shifted from governance structures to operational effectiveness: can financial entities' security operations teams identify, triage, and mitigate live threats before they cause material disruption?

The article highlights that many organizations have completed the administrative requirements of DORA but may lack the practical detection and response capacities needed to satisfy the regulation's core objective of digital operational resilience. Without adequate SOC visibility, financial entities risk regulatory non-compliance and increased exposure to undetected cyber incidents affecting the broader EU financial sector.