Compliance · DORA

DORA and email resilience for financial services.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act has been in force since 17 January 2025. For your email layer that means: protective measures, reporting, third-party risk management — documented in an auditable way.

Context

DORA and the email channel

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is an EU regulation (2022/2554) binding on financial services firms since 17 January 2025. Unlike NIS2, DORA is directly applicable — no national transposition required. Breaches can attract fines of up to EUR 10M.[1]

DORA is sector-specific and addresses operational resilience against ICT failures and cyber attacks. Email plays a central role here, since it is critical to many financial processes — customer communications, internal approvals, supervisory reporting. Three articles are particularly relevant for the email layer:

  • Art. 6 & 9 (encryption): Mandatory policies for the encryption of data at rest and in transit. In the email context this means a two-track approach: MTA-STS/DANE for transport and S/MIME as end-to-end encryption for sensitive financial data.[1]
  • Art. 15 (detection of anomalous activities): Mechanisms for detecting unauthorised access. DMARC aggregate reports (RUA) are the primary instrument for detecting domain spoofing attempts.
  • Art. 19 (reporting obligation): Serious cyber incidents must in part be reported to the supervisor within 4 hours. Preventive email authentication stops exactly the incidents that start this clock.[1]

Mailantis is not a complete DORA package — we specifically address email authentication and resilience as one building block within your ICT risk management framework. The overview below shows which DORA articles Mailantis supports and where additional measures are required.

Mapping table

DORA article ↔ Mailantis contribution

Article Requirement (short form) Mailantis contribution Status
Art. 8ICT risk management frameworkRisk score per domain, continuous assessmentsupported
Art. 9Protective measures for ICT systemsSPF/DKIM/DMARC/MTA-STS actively monitored and enforcedmet
Art. 10Incident detectionAnomaly detection, spoofing detection, alertingmet
Art. 11Response and recoveryAlert engine with PagerDuty/Slack, escalation tiersmet
Art. 12Learning and evolutionTrend reports, audit log for post-mortemsmet
Art. 17Incident classification and reportingSeverity levels in alerts, triggers for internal reporting pathssupported
Art. 25-27Resilience testing, penetration testingSelfCheck as a continuous testing toolpartial
Art. 28-30Third-party ICT risk managementDPA downloadable, EU hosting, SOC report on requestmet

Note: DORA requires a complete ICT risk management framework that goes well beyond the email layer (backup, BCM, penetration testing, outsourcing contracts and much more). Mailantis is one building block, not a complete package. For third-party assessments (Art. 28), the DPA and processing list are available on request.

FAQ

Common DORA questions

What does DORA regulate?

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (EU 2022/2554) requires operational resilience against IT outages and cyber attacks from financial firms — banks, insurers, investment firms, crypto-asset service providers. In force since 17 January 2025.

Who is subject to DORA?

Banks, insurers, pension funds, investment firms, payment service providers, crypto-asset service providers, and their critical IT service providers (TPPs — third-party providers). Some relief for micro and small enterprises.

Where does DORA hit the email layer?

Art. 8 (ICT risk management), Art. 9 (protective measures), Art. 11 (continuity), Art. 17 (incident classification) and Art. 28-30 (third-party risk). Email is explicitly a critical communication channel.

Is Mailantis a "critical third-party provider" under DORA?

Mailantis itself does not automatically qualify as "critical" under the ESA designation. As a financial services firm, however, you would likely treat us as an "ICT third-party provider" to be included in your vendor risk management. DPA and SOC reports are available on request.

How do audit reports help?

Mailantis delivers PDF reports with DMARC/SPF/DKIM/MTA-STS status, policy history and configuration snapshots. These reports are suitable as evidence for internal audits and supervisory audits (FMA, BaFin).

Sources

[1] Synthesis of: BaFin — DORA overview; EIOPA — Digital Operational Resilience Act; DLA Piper — "Seconds matter: Understanding DORA's real-time response requirements" (2025); European Commission — RTS on ICT Risk Management Framework. As of May 2026.

DORA-compliant email resilience.

DPA downloadable, EU hosting, reports ready for your next supervisory audit.