# Driving DORA compliance with effective ITSM practices ![ServiceDesk Plus DORA compliance ebook](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/laptop-frame.png) **Free e-book** Discover how your ITSM practices can anchor your organisation's compliance with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and how ServiceDesk Plus bridges the gaps that matter to financial regulators. If your download doesn't start automatically, please [click here](https://download.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/pdf/dora-compliance-e-book.pdf). By downloading, you agree to processing of personal data according to the [Privacy Policy](https://www.manageengine.com/privacy.html). ## How DORA redefines operational resilience in EU financial services DORA highlights a critical gap in existing EU financial regulations by emphasizing that preventing cyberthreats alone is not enough to ensure stability. Introduced by the EU, it recognizes that ICT disruptions can significantly impact financial systems even when strong security measures are in place. To address this, DORA establishes requirements for organizations to implement end-to-end resilience capabilities, covering risk prevention, threat detection, incident containment, recovery, and restoration. It sets out structured obligations for ICT risk management, incident reporting, operational resilience testing, and third-party risk oversight, ensuring financial institutions can maintain continuity in the face of disruptions. For IT service delivery teams, DORA is not just a regulatory requirement; it directly impacts how IT operations are run every day. The two focus areas in this e-book: - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) **ICT Risk Management (Articles 5—16):** Build and maintain a structured governance framework, risk register, and control mechanisms for ICT risks across your organisation - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) **ICT-Related Incident Management (Articles 17—19):** Detect, classify, and manage ICT-related incidents with the speed, consistency, and traceability required by DORA. ## Three key insights you'll walk away with - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) A concise, non-legal breakdown of DORA's ICT risk management and incident management obligations, translated into the everyday language of IT service delivery: assets, incidents, risks, and controls. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) A practical mapping of articles to ITIL-aligned processes, showing exactly where your current incident, problem, change, and asset management practices already contribute to DORA compliance. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) A feature-level walkthrough showing how ServiceDesk Plus capabilities—from CMDB and risk registers to automated incident workflows—directly address your ICT risk management obligations and accelerate your path to DORA compliance. ![DORA compliance screen A](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/dora-compliance-screen-a.png) ![DORA compliance screen B](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/dora-compliance-screen-b.png) ![DORA compliance screen C](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/dora-compliance-screen-c.png) ![DORA compliance screen D](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/dora-compliance-screen-d.png) ![Mug](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/mug.png) ## ITIL-aligned capabilities in ServiceDesk Plus that enable DORA compliance ### Access controls & governance - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Define clear ICT roles and responsibilities through RBAC and granular permission settings, enforcing least privilege across all functions. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Prevent self-approval conflicts and segregation-of-duty violations by routing access and change decisions through structured approval workflows with distinct control and audit roles. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Maintain a complete, time-stamped audit trail of every access modification, approval decision, and permission change—ready for regulatory inspection at any point. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Assign dedicated roles to oversee ICT third-party arrangements, with scoped access to vendor records, risk data, and dashboards for continuous monitoring. ### Incident management - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Ingest alerts from monitoring tools to auto-create incidents, ensuring no disruption goes unlogged. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Log, categorize, and prioritize every ICT incident using customizable templates, a configurable priority matrix, along with impact and urgency fields. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Trigger structured major incident workflows for critical events, with built-in escalation rules and SLA enforcement to meet response timelines. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Dispatch stage-by-stage notifications to regulators, internal teams, and affected clients at every defined reporting point in the incident life cycle. ### Problem management - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Link recurring incidents to underlying problems and drive root cause elimination to prevent repeat disruptions to critical ICT functions. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Accelerate root cause analysis using Zia's AI-driven RCA—surfacing related incidents, contributing factors, and recurring patterns across your environment. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Record post-incident findings as problem records and feed conclusions directly into the risk register to keep the ICT risk framework current. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Track every improvement action to closure, ensuring post-incident lessons translate into measurable changes rather than overlooked recommendations. ### Change management - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Route every change to ICT systems through formal change workflows with defined stages, CAB approvals, and post-implementation reviews to maintain full auditability. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Gate every RFC behind a structured risk assessment stage, using change workflow to ensure no change moves to approval until its impact on ICT security is documented and reviewed. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Enforce pre- and post-implementation risk assessment stages for every change involving legacy or critical systems. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Translate improvement actions from post-incident reviews and resilience tests into formally tracked, approved changes to ICT processes and controls. ### Asset management & CMDB - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Maintain a continuously updated inventory of all ICT assets—hardware, software, and configurations—through agent-based and agentless discovery. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Map asset interdependencies and business service relationships in the CMDB to sharpen impact assessments during incidents and changes. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Visually identify single points of failure within critical services using the CMDB relationship map, supporting proactive risk identification. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Record ICT third-party providers and link them to dependent services in the CMDB, giving management a clear view of vendor risk exposure at all times. ### Knowledge management - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Store ICT risk policies, business continuity plans, response procedures, and audit documentation in a versioned, approval-gated knowledge base. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Define review schedules and expiry dates on critical documents to ensure policies stay current with evolving threats and regulatory expectations. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Surface the right resolution guidance to responders at the moment it's needed, using AI-powered recommendations to speed up incident containment. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Capture lessons from incidents, resilience tests, and audits as structured knowledge articles that feed back into the ICT risk assessment process. ### Reports and dashboard - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Track ICT incident frequency, severity, affected services, and resolution times over time to monitor digital operational resilience strategy effectiveness. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Generate aggregated annual summaries of incident costs, downtime, and service impact using custom fields—ready for submission upon regulatory request. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Give senior ICT leadership the structured data they need to prepare the yearly management body report on ICT risk findings and improvement recommendations. - ![](https://cdn.manageengine.com/sites/meweb/images/service-desk/images/bullet-icon-dora.svg) Consolidate compliance posture across incidents, changes, assets, and access into a single view, making audit preparation a continuous process rather than a last-minute exercise.