The deadline has come and gone. As of October 17, 2024, the transposition deadline for the NIS2 Directive has passed, and for thousands of organizations across the EU (and those doing business within it), the reality of enforcement has arrived.
Several member states have not yet fully implemented the directive, which leaves many organizations unclear about enforcement timelines and what regulators will expect in the meantime.
For the last year, we’ve talked about preparation. Now, we need to talk about operational resilience.
For “Essential” and “Important” entities, ranging from healthcare and energy to manufacturing and digital infrastructure , NIS2 is no longer a future consideration. It is the current standard. The directive has introduced stricter requirements for risk management, incident reporting, and supply chain security, backed by penalties that can reach up to €10M or 2% of global turnover.
But looking beyond the fines, NIS2 is fundamentally about a shift in mindset: moving from reactive defense to proactive resilience.
The “Continuous” Reality of NIS2
At its core, NIS2 mandates that organizations implement technical and organizational measures to manage risk (Article 21). This isn’t a one-time audit; it is a requirement for constant vigilance.
The directive explicitly calls for incident handling, supply chain security, vulnerability disclosure, and the use of cryptography. The challenge many CISOs and IT leaders face today is that traditional, point-in-time penetration testing is no longer sufficient in meeting these “always-on” requirements. If you are only testing your assets once a year, you aren’t managing risk, you’re just observing it in hindsight.
How Synack Maps to the New Standard
At Synack, we have spent over a decade building a platform that aligns perfectly with the proactive nature of NIS2. We don’t just find vulnerabilities; we validate the remediation, ensuring that “compliance” equals actual security.
Here is how the Synack Platform supports the critical pillars of NIS2 right now:
1. Vulnerability Handling & Disclosure (The Hybrid Advantage) NIS2 requires a systematic approach to finding and fixing security vulnerabilities. Synack’s Continuous Penetration Testing delivers the best of both worlds: the Synack Red Team (1,500+ expert researchers) hunts for complex logic flaws, while Sara (Synack Autonomous Red Agent) will enable rapid detection of exploitable vulnerabilities at machine speed, ensuring you have 24/7 coverage that scales with your environment. All findings are manually validated, which removes false positives and gives you immediate evidence for auditors.
2. Supply Chain Security (The Hardest Problem) One of the most difficult aspects of NIS2 is assessing the security level of your direct suppliers. You are now responsible for the risks they introduce. Synack allows you to extend rigorous testing to your third-party vendors. We identify the gaps in your supply chain so you can enforce security policies based on data, not just questionnaires.
3. Attack Surface Discovery (Asset Management) You cannot protect what you cannot see. NIS2 compliance is impossible if you have shadow IT. Synack Attack Surface Discovery gives you a complete, real-time inventory of your external-facing assets, ensuring that every new web app or server spin-up is immediately flagged for testing.
Moving from Panic to Strategy
Previously, if your vendor got hacked, you could often claim it wasn’t “your” fault. NIS2 removes that excuse. If a third-party API you use (e.g., a payment processor or a chat widget) has a vulnerability and it affects your service, you are responsible for the risk it introduces. You are now legally required to “vet” their security. Article 23(4)(a): You must submit an “early warning” to the CSIRT within 24 hours of becoming aware of a “significant incident.” and NIS2 introduces GDPR-style fines that are tied to your global revenue, not just a flat fee.
Consider the stakes: A vulnerability in a legacy system or a third-party API can now lead to mandatory reporting within 24 hours and significant financial exposure (fines can be up to €10,000,000 or 2% of total global annual turnover (whichever is higher).
By integrating Synack into your SOC, utilizing our integrations with platforms like Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel, you can correlate high-fidelity vulnerability data with threat intelligence. This allows you to prioritize the fixes that actually matter, satisfying the NIS2 requirement for effective risk management.
The Bottom Line
NIS2 is here to stay. The goal isn’t just to avoid penalties; it’s to build an infrastructure that can repel attacks and bounce back when breaches occur.
If you are looking to align your security roadmap with NIS2 using a platform built for continuous resilience, let’s have a conversation.
