In the financial sector, digital innovation is a double-edged sword. For years, it mainly offered opportunities — but now, the risks are becoming more tangible. Think of cyberattacks, system failures, or disruptions in the chain. With serious consequences for your customers, your reputation, and your continuity.
To structurally manage those risks, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is now in effect. This European regulation sets strict requirements for digital resilience. In this blog, we explain what DORA entails, which organisations it applies to, and why observability is the key to meeting these requirements smartly and efficiently.
What is DORA?
DORA is a European regulation that obligates financial institutions to structurally improve their digital resilience. The law has been in force since January 2023, and by 17 January 2025, organisations must fully comply with its requirements.
Who does DORA apply to?
DORA applies to almost all organisations within the financial sector:
banks, insurers, pension funds, asset managers, payment service providers — but also third-party ICT providers that deliver (critical) services to these institutions. That means DORA impacts not just traditional financial firms, but also cloud providers, hosting companies, and software vendors that are part of the digital supply chain.
The objective is clear: fewer vulnerabilities to ICT disruptions and cyber threats, better control over risks, and a faster response to incidents. In this sector, trust is everything — digital resilience is no longer a luxury, but a compliance requirement.
How observability helps translate DORA into daily practice
DORA demands demonstrable control over IT risks — from continuous monitoring and risk assessments to logging, response procedures, and reporting. That is exactly where observability comes in: the structured measuring and monitoring of your full IT chain.
With a well-designed observability environment, you gain full visibility into what is happening within your systems. You can detect incidents early, pinpoint the root cause across the chain, and generate detailed reports. That is essential not just for internal operations, but also for external audits and supervisory reporting.
At MeasureWorks, we design observability to go beyond compliance. It directly adds value to your operations — enabling faster software delivery, fewer disruptions, quicker recovery, and stronger collaboration across teams.
MeasureWorks x DORA
For several of our clients, DORA plays a key role in their strategic roadmap. We support them in building a scalable observability practice, with Dynatrace as the central solution for chain monitoring and insight.
Our role? Not just implementing the technology — but ensuring that observability works. Transparent, adopted across the organisation, and built for the future.
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