GPRC for Operational Resilience: Delivering on DORA
The Enterprise Bridge for Digital Trust in the European Union
On the bridge of a starship, everything is connected. Navigation depends on sensors, sensors depend on power, power depends on engineering, and the captain’s decisions depend on the clarity and integrity of the information flowing across the ship. That is the image leaders should carry when they think about the EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). DORA is not merely another checklist of controls; it is the European Union’s insistence that financial institutions, and the ICT companies that support them, run their digital enterprise like a mission-critical vessel — coordinated from a single command center where governance, performance, risk management, and compliance operate as one.
DORA became applicable in January 2025 with a simple demand that is difficult to execute: prove that your organization can withstand, respond to, and recover from material ICT disruption while maintaining continuity of critical services. Behind that demand is the EU’s recognition that cyber threats, technology failures, concentration in third-party providers, and cross-border interdependencies can destabilize not only a firm but the confidence of markets and citizens.
Fragmented, after-the-fact, paper-driven “resilience” will not suffice. What is required is GPRC — governance, performance, risk management, and compliance — fully orchestrated, not scattered, through a modern architecture. In my GRC 7.0 language, that is GRC Orchestrate: a semantic, data-driven operating model with digital twins, agentic AI, and business-integrated processes that turn regulation into real operational capability.
Why DORA exists – and what it means in practice
The EU did not draft DORA to create busywork . . .
[The rest of this blog can be read on the Corporater blog, where GRC 20/20’s Michael Rasmussen is a Guest Blogger]