DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) Regulation

DORA: How ROK Solution simplifies your compliance before the January 2025 deadline

⏳ The DORA Regulation Is Coming Into Effect Soon! On January 17, 2025, all financial institutions in the European Union will need to comply with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), an ambitious regulation designed to strengthen digital operational resilience against risks associated with information and communication technologies (ICT). However, according to a study conducted by the audit and consulting firm Grant Thornton, 75% of companies subject to DORA had initiated compliance work by the end of 2023, but most were still in the early stages of the process. At ROK Solution, we understand the challenges you face in ensuring the continuity of your operations and meeting these new requirements. This is why we have developed an intuitive, secure, and powerful platform to support you in achieving DORA compliance. What is DORA and why is it essential? The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) establishes a common regulatory framework to ensure that financial institutions can withstand, recover, and continue their operations in the event of ICT-related disruptions. This regulation harmonizes digital resilience practices across the entire European financial ecosystem. DORA is essential because it: Strengthens digital security: Reduces vulnerabilities and IT risks. Protects the continuity of financial services: Ensures the resilience of critical services during crises. Harmonizes European practices: Establishes common standards to anticipate and respond to threats. Scope of application: DORA applies to a wide range of entities, covering over 18,000 financial institutions according to the EBA: Financial institutions: Banks, insurance companies, asset managers. Critical technology providers: Cloud service providers, SaaS, and strategic infrastructures. Fintechs and payment institutions: Innovative digital players integrated into the financial value chain. This scope ensures global resilience, addressing both internal and external dependencies. Main objectives: The main objectives of DORA are: Strengthen cybersecurity and reduce digital operational risks: Identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in ICT systems. Ensure the continuity of critical financial services by minimizing disruptions. Create a harmonized European framework: Standardize digital resilience practices across the sector. Enhance digital governance: Hold executives accountable for ICT risk management and ensure ongoing monitoring. Key requirements: According to the European Banking Authority (EBA), nearly 60% of companies affected by DORA were not yet compliant by the end of 2023. This exposes these organizations to costly operational disruptions and significant financial penalties. These fines can reach up to €10 million or 5% of total annual revenue, depending on the severity of non-compliance. ICT Risk Management: Identification, classification, and mitigation of critical vulnerabilities through dynamic controls and continuous assessments. Business Continuity: Development of robust plans and regular resilience testing with realistic scenarios (IT outages, cyberattacks). ICT Incident Monitoring: Proactive detection of incidents using metrics such as MTTD (Mean Time to Detect) and MTTR (Mean Time to Recover). Third-Party Supervision: Auditing and monitoring critical suppliers with a focus on risks related to the supply chain. Reporting and Traceability: Implementation of compliant dashboards (Excel, JSON, API formats) for tracking and reporting to authorities. Dedicated Governance: Involvement of executives in a proactive digital risk management strategy. How ROK Solution helps you meet DORA requirements 1. Mapping critical systems ROK Solution provides advanced tools to meet DORA requirements: Dynamic and automated mapping: Real-time synchronization with your existing IT tools such as CMDB (Configuration Management Database) or SIEM solutions. Identification of critical dependencies: Prioritization of mitigation plans through analyses based on dynamic scoring. Visualization of internal and external ICT flows: Enables optimized planning of continuity scenarios and impact assessments in case of disruptions. Auditable, compliant reports: Automatic provision of documents for internal and regulatory audits. 2. Simplified ICT risk management Our platform simplifies and automates proactive ICT risk management: Continuous assessment of vulnerabilities and threats with dynamic dashboards. Automation of corrective action prioritization to quickly address critical weaknesses. Generation of customized reports compliant with audits and DORA standards. 3. Business continuity and resilience testing With ROK Solution, create and manage robust business continuity plans: Preconfigured templates aligned with DORA standards to design your BCP/DRP plans. Realistic ICT crisis simulations with result analysis and improvement planning. Automated post-test reports to demonstrate compliance and track the effectiveness of actions. 4. Proactive incident monitoring ROK Solution ensures rapid and effective incident management: Advanced disruption detection: Integration of real-time monitoring tools with configurable alerts to minimize interruptions. Centralization of incident data: In-depth analysis and structured reporting for each event. Automation of corrective responses: Precise tracking of key metrics such as MTTD (Mean Time to Detect), MTTR (Mean Time to Recover), and MTTA (Mean Time to Acknowledge), ensuring continuous improvement in response times. 5. Supervision of critical ICT providers ROK Solution helps you manage your supplier relationships with optimized tools: Dedicated critical provider repository: Centralization of key information (performance, contracts, risk matrices) with dynamic tracking. Collaborative resilience testing: Coordination with suppliers to conduct shared crisis scenarios, including automated reports on their response capabilities. These scenarios are based on realistic simulations, such as critical system outages or targeted cyberattacks, and are co-developed with your suppliers to ensure a coordinated response. Continuous automated audits: Real-time monitoring of supplier compliance with DORA standards, including proactive detection of potential vulnerabilities in the supply chain. 6. Reporting and traceability ROK Solution simplifies the management of reporting obligations with: Interactive dashboards: Compatible formats (Excel, JSON, API) for seamless integration with existing systems. Real-time action traceability: Historical tracking of modifications and corrective measures for complete transparency during audits. Key performance indicators (KPIs): Measurement of critical timelines (MTTD, MTTR) to continuously optimize your resilience strategies. Why choose ROK Solution for your DORA compliance? An integrated solution: Centralize risk management, resilience testing, and supervision within a single platform. No-code technology assisted by generative AI: Configure customized workflows quickly, without requiring technical expertise. Accelerated compliance: Leverage ready-to-use templates to reduce deployment timeframes. Enhanced security: Ensure comprehensive protection of your sensitive data, compliant with European standards. Strategic collaboration: In partnership with SmartBot Consulting, benefit from advanced RPA and BPM solutions to optimize your processes. ROK Solution is one of the few platforms that combines centralized risk management, flexible no-code capabilities, and generative AI. This allows for the creation of

ROK Solution claims 1st place at the Finance Innovation award

In front of more than 200 bank and insurance leaders, Global cluster Finance Innovation and Microsoft have awarded Olivier Bourrouilh, ROK Solution CEO with the Microsoft Finance Innovation Award, 1st place. This award is given every year to the most innovative startup companies who develop solutions for finance with Microsoft technology. ROK Solution’s product is a highly relevant offer, which can significantly help generate value for banks, insurance companies, or capital markets (Corporate and Investment Banking). Their unique, forward-thinking solution was developed on the latest Microsoft technology and features high performance and ergonomics. All these elements make this reward very well-deserved. In a highly-regulated market environment, ROK helps ensure system integrity and conformity. ROK Solution integrates risk and conformity management tools into one platform, along with process execution, secure data management and knowledge transmission via a unified collaborative communication system. In the specific context of Solvency II and Basel 3 regulatory frameworks, which have been pushed forward by the economic crisis situation, ROK is the only integrated solution to consider both risks and organization, and offer a response to the issues these texts deal with. Thanks to its easy implementation and installation made possible by Cloud technology, ROK provides a fast operational solution to financial institutions that need to follow these regulations, ensuring immediate ROI. ROK has already received numerous awards and distinctions in France and abroad (France Innovation, Microsoft, Oséo, Red Herring…) In direct continuity with this announcement, we will organize an official presentation and launch event for our platform, on April 12th. More than 120 invited attendees have confirmed their presence, among whom major leaders and decision-makers, who will give speeches during our presentation.

Manage your Fast and Lean Closing Projects

A ROK Client recently told us: “We close accounts in less than 10 days and our productivity has increased by 50%”. What if you were next? Completing Accounting Closing procedures in a timely manner is an important challenge for finance managers. So important in fact, that account closing times are often seen as health indicators for a company’s organization. As such, more and more companies seek to implement efficient Fast and Lean Closing projects. Resting on a set of methods, management tools, control points and procedure improvements, as well as IS architecture optimization, these projects aim to provide faster reporting, but also more frequent, reliable and more relevant, in order to promote faster decision-making, which can make a significant difference on highly competitive global markets. Fast and Lean Closing projects help companies reduce closing times, publish results according to collaborators’ needs and responsibilities, and improve overall output data quality, which translates to a significant boost for competitiveness. How does ROK Solution handle these aspects? ROK is a Collaborative Intelligence platform that allows companies to map out, model and execute processes, managing risks and following performance indicators dynamically and in real time. The entire management structure is integrated to a unified communication platform. Gone are the days of departments failing to communicate efficiently, along with tools requiring heavy formation and integration costs. With ROK, users are at the center of the structure, and modeling processes becomes ridiculously easy. In order to share knowledge and help our clients lay out their process efficiently, ROK Solution comes with its natural companion, the ROK Store. Filled to the brim with data and preset processes, the ROK Store gives access to many useful references, which can be easily integrated into your company workflows. Carry out projects easily, thanks to proven and easy to use references requiring little to no adaptation to your company specificities. ROK Solution is the only integrated Fast Closing solution; ready to use, adaptable, fast and easy to deploy. Hosted on the Cloud and available on a SaaS (Software as a Service) model, ROK Solution can easily interface with existing Information Systems, optimizing IT investments, and making change management easier for your company.

Finance Management and innovative technology: new accounting closing and internal auditing experiences

APDC Nord and IFACI, in partnership with KPMG, CIC Nord Ouest and SKEMA Business School have organized a conference on March 20, 2013, on the theme of “Finance Management and innovative technology: new accounting closing and internal auditing experiences”. During the conference, several finance managers took the floor, including Laurent BOULLIAT, Accounting Manager, DECATHLON FRANCE Eric CASPERS, Deputy manager for Financial Strategy on Auditing, Accounting and Risk management, VILOGIA – Vice-President of IFACI NORD David LECLERCQ, ENODIA President – BENCHMARKING INSTITUTE Vice-President: Two companies from Northern French regions who chose to use innovative technology solutions shared their experiences: DECATHLON on optimizing and controlling their accounting closing process VILOGIA on managing risks and deploying an internal monitoring solution on operational tasks. Two experiences made possible by ROK*’s Collaborative Intelligence Solution. (*) ROK: Risk Organization Knowledge. We help develop your company’s performance: task and resource optimization, risk management, collaboration, know-how capitalization, real-time control, internal auditing evaluation, organization flexibility, productivity gains, finance management assistance.

APDC-IFACI Conference on Finance Management and Innovative Technology crowned with success on March 20th

APDC Nord (French Association of Accounting and Management Directors) and IFACI (French Auditing and Internal Control Institute), in partnership with KPMG, CIC Nord Ouest and Skema Business School, have organized a meeting on the theme of “Finance Management and innovative technology”. At the heart of competition and performance challenges (costs reduction, risk management and practices optimization), APDC Nord and IFACI have asked two companies from the North of France to talk about their finance management experience with ROK Solution. The APDC-IFACI conference lasted over 2 hours, and featured speeches from Décathlon on optimizing their accounting closing process, and Vilogia on risk managements and deploying an internal audit solution; Enodia, ROK Solution’s consulting partner, talked about the clear advantages and added value that an optimization project can yield when supported by an innovative solution. Over 100 attendees, many of which were major actors in the Northern regions of France. The event proved very successful, demonstrating companies’ motivation to promote and benefit from innovative technology to gain a competitive edge. Some of the major actors of the French Northern regions who attended the event have expressed their satisfaction with how good and relevant the interventions had been. About ROK Solution: ROK Solution is a Cloud-based Collaborative Intelligence solution that allows companies of any kind to boost their performance, promote innovation and carry out expansion strategies. The platform allows companies to model a structure quickly and simply, generate an array of dynamic tasks for collaborators, and output monitoring data on a dashboard for managers. ROK Solution has won 1st place in the Microsoft Finance Innovation award in 2012. Their solution properly integrates the latest technology in a user-friendly interface that allows to avoid any transition or migration management.

Grant Thornton and ROK Solution establish a strategic partnership, offering their clients even more optimization opportunities for accounting and finance management.

Grant Thornton, leading Audit and Consulting group in France and abroad, and ROK Solution, publisher of a Collaborative Intelligence solution, announce a new partnership oriented towards “B2B2B” services. Grant Thornton and ROK Solution have established a unique partnership, which aims to complement GT’s Consulting services with ROK’s integrated, Collaborative Intelligence Cloud platform. This synergy rests on developing joint business and commercial activities, around Grant Thornton’s “Operational Consulting and Outsourcing” and ROK Solution’s product. Both entities will work together through joint actions on their respective markets. Olivier Bourrouilh-Parège, ROK Solution CEO, comments: “Thanks to this new approach, Grant Thornton takes the position of a visionary actor, pioneering Consulting services of tomorrow: more functional, more reactive and result-driven. This is about providing a better service to experts giving more clarity and flexibility to the organization, so as to optimize performance and achieve economies of scale. I am thrilled by what this great new partnership will bring to our clients.” Christophe Radepont, Associate and Operational Consulting / Finance Transformation service line manager for Grant Thornton adds: “This partnership established with ROK Solution shows a double goal: expanding our externalization offers with an integrated service, and providing consulting services on our client’s strategies for accounting management optimization.” ABOUT GRANT THORNTON FRANCE Grant Thornton is a leading Auditing and Consulting group, with 1450 collaborators in France, including 108 associates, in 23 different offices. They specialize in five sectors: Auditing, Consulting for Finance, Operations & Outsourcing, Tax and Law. Grant Thornton works with dynamic companies (listed on the stock exchange, public and private), and helps them reach their full growth potential, with the help of highly experienced and directly involved associates, and teams delivering expertise services with a very high added value. Members of the Grant Thornton International network constitute a leading Auditing and Consulting organization in the world. Each member of the network is independent in financial, legal and management terms. ABOUT ROK SOLUTION ROK Solution is a Cloud-based Collaborative Intelligence solution which allows all kinds of companies to boost their performance, promote innovation and carry out expansion strategies. The platform allows to model a structure quickly and simply, generate an array of dynamic tasks for collaborators, and output monitoring data on a dashboard for managers. ROK Solution has won 1st place in the Microsoft Finance Innovation award in 2012. Their solution efficiently integrates cutting-edge technology in a user-friendly interface that allows to avoid any transition or migration management.

Switch to Fast Accounting Closing

Producing complete monthly balance sheets as fast as possible (fast closing) has become a major challenge for many finance managers. Even beyond regulation concerns, in an ever-changing economic environment, the aim of fast closing is to provide operational departments and finance management with essential decision-making information which needs to be delivered faster and with greater precision every time. These quality and time requirements make it essential to approach the matter from a different angle, thinking more and more ahead of closing activities, monitoring and controlling the entire closing process in great detail, and in collaboration with operational branches – which are often involved in the critical phases of account closing. Many Finance Directors consider fast closing but do not know how to achieve it. Here is some advice from client feedback on fast closing: Identify processes, actors, information flows, applications and documents involved in the closing process. Establish a complete diagnosis and identify: information and resource bottlenecks, activities yielding no added value, activities that could be moved upstream, issues with coordination, information systems or documents. Are you having trouble with the advice above? No worries. You should already know what is going wrong. Start from the ideal closing process. Yes, the perfect one, finished after 3 days. Rethink and simplify your fast closing process, as if it involved less people, speaking the same language, with mutual objectives and a fully functional IS. Technology is there to help you. Your processes can be operated, monitored and optimized on the fly. The information you depend on can be available even before initiating the closing process (stocks, commitments, invoices, salary costs, mutual account arrangements…) Try things out, measure, perform and start optimizing account closing sustainably. Maybe one day this can all be done in real-time, but for now you are already fast closing. ROK Solution provides many ways to help you achieve fast closing. ROK Solution allows to integrate your company’s structure, systems, processes, ERM and task references into an Integrated Management System. Very soon, you can be presented with a solution that will help you go through the first two steps of your fast closing project. Your processes can be realigned and redesigned easily: you can then focus on the who-what-when, and deploy new collaboration solutions in a few clicks. How does it work? ROK Solution integrates the most advanced process modeling tools, and provides smart content access management with the ROK3™ engine. Stop working day in day out on Aris, Mega or Visio. These overly complex tools waste your time, and fail to take the specificities of your organization into account. Get your licenses refunded, you will save time and money. Take control of your fast closing project. As you launch processes, all the involved people will receive tasks on their ROK dashboard, or by e-mail. Each task includes the information relevant to its realization, such as business rules, instructions, ERP, ERM, access rights and communication with the other actors involved. You can now oversee the entire closing process, visualizing progress and difficulties encountered by your collaborators. You can easily weigh in to help those who need it, and follow-up on tasks that lag behind. You can also measure KPI, identify points of improvement for your processes and deploy them in a few clicks. You are in control.

APDC Paris, July 3rd: “New technology at the service of Finance Management” – ROK Solution experience feedback

APDC Paris (Association of Accounting and Management Directors) has organized an event on “New technology at the service of finance management”. You can react and comment on this event on our blog. Responding to performance goals (costs reduction, risk management and business process optimization), here is experience feedback from two companies that chose to take advantage of innovative technologies and solutions. More than 40 people signed up to hear about company experiences with ROK Solution, more specifically on account closing and internal monitoring, with interventions from: Philippe THIERRY-MIEG, APDC Secretary-General, Administration and Internal Monitoring manager for Financial IS, AREVA Laurent BOULLIAT, Accounting Director, DECATHLON France Eric CASPERS, Deputy manager for Financial Strategy on Auditing, Accounting and Risk management, VILOGIA, IFACI Nord Vice-President David LECLERCQ, Enodia President, Benchmarking Institute Vice-President

Category: Finance