By now, every European board knows the acronyms: NIS2. DORA. GDPR. CAF.
They roll off the tongue like a legal chant, but compliance isn’t the same as readiness. And 2025 proved that better than any legislation could.
Across Europe, the systems that fell weren’t necessarily unregulated. They were unprepared. Rules existed. Response plans existed. But when the alarms went off, too many teams discovered the difference between “having a policy” and “having a plan that works.”
The Year Regulation Got Real
2025 was the year regulation stopped being paperwork and started being personal.
Supervisors began asking not if organisations had controls in place, but how they knew those controls worked.
The EU’s NIS2 Directive tightened reporting timelines, forcing boards to recognise that compliance isn’t something you delegate to IT – it’s something you rehearse.
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) raised the bar for financial services, demanding technical testing and supplier assurance that few banks could complete without major rewiring.
And the Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF v4.0) brought fresh expectations for UK and EU service providers, putting supply chain security and response integration front and centre.
It’s been a regulatory wake-up call and it’s still ringing into 2026.
From Box-Ticking to Muscle Memory
Legislation tells you what to do. Experience tells you how fast you need to do it.
The strongest European companies in 2025 didn’t just file documentation – they practised execution.
- They ran breach simulations with vendors, not just internal teams.
- They updated their incident playbooks every quarter, not every audit.
- And they didn’t wait for a breach to learn who they could rely on.
In other words, they built readiness into rhythm.
The Managed Services Reality Check
PwC’s 2026 Global Digital Trust Insights revealed a familiar paradox: 67% of organisations still spend about the same on reactive measures as on prevention.
Only 24% have reached the balance point where proactive measures dominate.
The leaders are shifting that ratio. They’re relying on managed cybersecurity partners not just to monitor, but to mentor. To bring specialist skills where internal ones have stalled. And to turn compliance reports into operational readiness exercises.
That’s where managed services are quietly becoming Europe’s real cyber infrastructure.
People, Not Paper
Every major breach this year exposed a common weakness: fatigue.
Constant reporting demands and endless compliance cycles burn out cyber teams.True resilience requires people who aren’t buried in documentation. It requires time – time to train, to test, and to think clearly under pressure.
That’s why, across Europe, C-suites are starting to treat mental resilience and cyber resilience as connected.
A good partner doesn’t just protect systems; they protect bandwidth.
What 2026 Demands
2026 will test which companies have learned and which have simply passed the test once.
- AI-driven attacks will evolve faster than committees can meet.
- Regulators will expect cross-border coordination by default.
And the organisations that thrive will be those that treat regulation as a floor – not a ceiling. Readiness isn’t about memorising frameworks. It’s about proving, every day, that your controls work when theory fails.
A Grounded View
At ENHALO, we see readiness not as a compliance box, but as a capability that lives in the rhythm of operations.
Our teams work with boards that no longer ask, “Are we compliant?” They ask, “Can we recover?”
That’s the real pivot for 2026 when regulation becomes lived experience, and readiness becomes the competitive edge.
