Rules are sometimes a contentious subject. Whereas some argue they hinder innovation by introducing extreme paperwork, others contend that the absence of clear guidelines can result in unquantified dangers with wide-reaching penalties—from shoppers and organizations to total markets.
Nonetheless, there are moments when either side of the talk align—and cybersecurity is a type of instances.
However it’s possible you’ll marvel, why cybersecurity? What is occurring on this area that creates the required synergies? The reply is that there are two most important drivers for this:
- The rising frequency and class of ransomware assaults have severely impacted organizations, inflicting reputational, monetary, and in some instances, human or vital infrastructure damages
- Underinvestment in cybersecurity instruments and practitioner expertise
These causes are exactly the place rules play a vital function: They intention to deal with these gaps by imposing good safety requirements, imposing penalties for non-compliance, and requiring organizations to allocate sources for prevention, detection, and incident response.
Happily, regulatory our bodies are already appearing. In america, for instance, HIPAA ensures the safety of affected person knowledge throughout the healthcare sector, whereas PCI DSS governs the safety of card fee techniques within the industrial area.
Of specific significance are two main rules rising from the European Union, each designed to considerably enhance cybersecurity resilience and danger administration throughout sectors:
- Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)
- Community and Data Safety Directive (NIS2)
Nonetheless, many organizations face vital challenges in the case of implementing these regulatory mandates. Usually, the language utilized in such rules is high-level and lacks prescriptive steering, making it tough to translate necessities into actionable steps. Moreover, organizations might not have the suitable instruments, processes or infrastructure in place to successfully implement and operationalize these requirements.
This raises a vital query: How can organizations obtain compliance in a sensible, scalable approach?
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 to the Rescue
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 presents priceless steering for organizations trying to handle and mitigate cybersecurity dangers. Whereas it doesn’t prescribe particular options, it offers a stable construction for translating high-level enterprise targets into actionable technical necessities.
Right here is the place you possibly can leverage any cybersecurity device utilizing NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 to implement these technical necessities, given the device has the mandatory capabilities and functionalities to deal with them.
Enter Cisco Safe Workload.
Cisco Safe Workload is a holistic safety answer designed to ship in-depth utility workload visibility and safety throughout on-premises and multicloud environments. Safe Workload focuses on three most important use instances:
- Zero Belief Microsegmentation: Utilizing agent and agentless approaches, Safe Workload can uncover workloads based mostly on labels, mechanically uncover and counsel segmentation insurance policies based mostly on site visitors flows, validate and check the coverage with none operational influence, and implement the dynamic coverage on a number of enforcement factors comparable to host-based firewalls, Knowledge Processing Models (DPUs), community firewalls, load balancers, and built-in cloud safety controls.
- Vulnerability Detection and Safety: Using an agent, Safe Workload offers visibility into the applying workload runtime, enabling the detection of susceptible packages and susceptible container pictures. It then leverages this info utilizing vulnerability (Frequent Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) attribute-based insurance policies to quarantine workloads or carry out digital patching through Safe Firewall.
- Behavioral Detection and Safety: Safe Workload displays operating course of for modifications in conduct and an in depth course of tree and course of snapshot. It detects anomalous conduct utilizing MITRE ATT&CK or with customized forensic guidelines. By leveraging Safe Firewall’s Speedy Menace Containment, safety of each agent and agentless workloads might be achieved.


As you possibly can see, Safe Workload presents the breadth and depth of capabilities wanted to function a core cybersecurity device. However the important thing query stays: How can we successfully correlate and map these options to particular technical necessities?
Mapping DORA and NIS2 to NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
DORA and NIS2 necessities are sometimes high-level, requiring IT groups and NetSec groups to interpret and translate them into actionable technical controls for implementation.
To streamline this course of, organizations can leverage NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 as a foundational reference. By mapping its steering to Safe Workload capabilities, we will successfully translate those self same necessities into sensible, tool-driven implementations aligned with DORA and NIS2 mandates.






The Microsegmentation Journey With NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 and Safe Workload
Microsegmentation redefines conventional community safety by shifting the perimeter to the person asset. It creates micro-perimeters throughout multi-cloud environments, isolating and securing every workload independently.
This strategy has grow to be a sensible basis for implementing zero belief architectures, because it allows the enforcement of least privilege entry on the community degree.
Nonetheless, operationalizing microsegmentation stays a major problem. It requires shut collaboration throughout numerous groups—safety, networking, operations, and compliance—which may create complexity and friction. For a deeper dive into these challenges and how one can overcome them, I like to recommend studying the weblog submit “Enterprise Chief’s Information for a Profitable Microsegmentation Mission” by my colleague Brijeshkumar Shah.
That is the place Cisco Safe Workload turns into the toolset that may allow organizations to efficiently implement microsegmentation, whereas additionally supporting compliance efforts. By fostering collaboration throughout groups and integrating with present processes, Safe Workload helps make zero belief achievable and scalable.


Navigating Compliance with the Proper Strategy and Instruments
Regulatory and compliance mandates might be advanced and difficult to navigate. Nonetheless, with the suitable strategy—translating enterprise necessities into actionable technical controls—and the suitable toolset to implement them, the trail to attaining compliance turns into much more manageable. To see how Cisco Safe Workload can help your compliance journey, try my Cisco Reside session, the place I showcase reside demos and sensible examples of how this answer might be utilized to satisfy regulatory necessities successfully.
Need to study extra? Take a look at the Cisco Safe Workload product web page.
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