Network Visibility in the Era of
NIS2 and DORA
The New Regulatory Landscape
Across the European Union, cybersecurity regulation has entered a new phase. With the enforcement of NIS2 (Network and Information Security) and DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act), compliance is now a matter of corporate and executive accountability.
The Liability Shift: Breaches may now result in penalties for management, including personal liability and a potential temporary ban from management roles.
The Scope of NIS2 & DORA
Energy, transport, banking, financial market infrastructures, health, drinking/waste water, digital infrastructure, ICT service management, public administration, and space.
Includes the entire ecosystem of direct suppliers and vendors. Entities must ensure vendor adherence to security standards and continuous monitoring.
Postal/courier, waste management, chemicals, food distribution, manufacturing (medical devices, electronics, vehicles), digital services (marketplaces, search engines, social platforms), and research.
Targets financial firms and their ICT service providers to ensure operational continuity and risk management.
A Fundamental Shift for Leadership
This introduces a shift in how infrastructure is viewed at the board level:
Cybersecurity is no longer discretionary spending
Compliance is no longer periodic; it is continuous.
Visibility is no longer optional; it is foundational.
Reporting obligations (often within 24–72 hours) demand a level of accuracy that cannot be achieved without verifiable, complete data. Companies must prove what happened, not estimate it.
The Hidden Financial Risk of Conventional Scaling
Many companies attempt to meet these demands by simply purchasing higher-capacity firewalls or moving to advanced NDR platforms. While a step in the right direction, this approach often leads to unanticipated surprises:
The 400G Cost Trap:
As networks evolve to 100G/400G, security tools must process exponentially larger volumes of data at disproportionately higher costs.
The Noise Problem:
Inspection tools are often forced to process irrelevant data (e.g., backups/internal replication). This leads to packet drops and blind spots.
ROI Erosion:
Security teams spend more time managing data noise than mitigating actual risk.
Why “More Tools” Is Not the Answer: NIS2 and DORA mandate outcomes (continuous monitoring, accurate reporting), not specific tools. Tools are evaluated on capability, but Compliance depends on data integrity.
Network Visibility as an Enabler
Bridging this gap requires a dedicated Visibility Layer built on two components:
Network Packet Brokers (NPBs): These aggregate, filter, and deduplicate traffic, ensuring tools receive only the data they need.
Financial & Operational Impact
Optimised Tool Utilisation:
Reduce the data volume sent to tools by 30–50% through filtering and deduplication.
Extended Asset Lifecycle:
Decouple network speed from tool processing power to avoid premature upgrades of high-cost security appliances
Audit Readiness:
Provide packet-level evidence for investigators strengthening the organization’s ability to respond to regulatory audits and incident investigations
Reduced Operational Overhead:
Security teams can focus on actionable insights rather than managing excessive data volumes and false positives.
Mapping Visibility to Regulatory Mandates
The relevance of network visibility becomes particularly clear when mapped directly to regulatory expectations:
Continuous Monitoring
Enabled through uninterrupted access to real-time traffic data
Risk Management
Strengthened by comprehensive visibility into network behavior
Incident Reporting
Supported by accurate,
packet-level evidence rather than aggregated logs
Strategic Considerations for Financial Leadership
For CFOs and board members, the key question is not whether to invest in security, but how to ensure that investment translates into measurable risk reduction and regulatory assurance.
A visibility-first approach introduces an improved financial model:
Cost control through optimized use of existing tools
Risk reduction through elimination of blind spots
Regulatory alignment through verifiable data
This aligns cybersecurity investment more closely with broader financial objectives: predictability, efficiency, and accountability.
Real-World Audit Scenarios
The Forensic Evidence Question
Operational Reality:
Most companies rely on logs. Logs are summaries; they can be faked or missed during a CPU spike.
Visibility Approach:
Evidence requires Integrity. By using passive Network TAPs, you capture 100% of the raw traffic. It’s the ‘Unbiased Witness’ that provides the forensic proof required by NIS2/NISG 2026 (Austria) and DORA.
The Data Loss (Blind Spot) Question
Operational Reality:
Streaming (e.g. Netflix/YouTube) and background updates flood security tools. This leads to Packet Loss, meaning non-compliance because you aren’t actually monitoring everything.
Visibility Approach:
Our Packet Brokers act as a high-speed filter. We strip out the “junk” and only send relevant security data to your tools. You save on license costs and ensure your tools never miss a packet.
The Resilience Question
Operational Reality:
DORA and NIS2 demand “Digital Operational Resilience.” A security tool becoming a ‘Single Point of Failure’ is a major compliance risk.
Visibility Approach:
Safeguard your Uptime. Cubro Bypass Switch automatically detects tool failure and reroutes traffic in milliseconds. You stay secure and stay online. Resilience isn’t just about stopping hacks; it’s about keeping the lights on.
The Sovereignty Question
Operational Reality:
For Austrian critical infrastructure (Energy, Health), using non-EU hardware creates a ‘Supply Chain Risk’ under NIS2/ NISG 2026 (NISG 2026 – Network and Information Systems Security Act 2026) Section 18.
Visibility Approach:
Sovereignty by Design. Cubro headquartered in Vienna addresses this through locally engineered solutions and strong control over design, development, and security standards. When an auditor asks about your supply chain, you can point to a local partner who follows the same Austrian laws as you.
The OT / Production Question
Operational Reality:
In manufacturing environments, many legacy systems (10 – 20+ years old) run on heterogeneous connectivity – often copper-based, sometimes with fiber backbone links.
These systems typically cannot support agents, and even light probing or scanning can cause instability or downtime.
Visibility Approach:
Visibility without Contact. Cubro Passive Optical TAPs and electric TAPs take a copy of the traffic without interfering with the network thus getting the data needed for NIS2 without ever touching the sensitive machinery.
The Executive Liability Question
Operational Reality:
NISG 2026 makes CEOs personally liable. Relying on best guesses from software is a huge personal risk.
Visibility Approach:
Protect the Board. Cubro provides a hardware-level Source of Truth. When you sign that declaration, you aren’t guessing, you are basing it on physical, verifiable network data.
Conclusion: Visibility is a Foundation, Not an Add-On
In the current regulatory landscape, compliance cannot be achieved through tools alone. It requires confidence in the data that underpins every security and reporting decision.
Network visibility provides that foundation and it enables organizations to:
See their entire network without gaps
Use their existing tools more effectively
Respond to regulatory demands with evidence, not assumptions
The question is no longer whether visibility is needed, but how it is implemented.
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