Rules are sometimes a contentious matter. Whereas some argue they hinder innovation by introducing extreme forms, others contend that the absence of clear guidelines can result in unquantified dangers with wide-reaching penalties—from customers and organizations to complete markets.
Nonetheless, there are moments when each side of the talk align—and cybersecurity is a type of instances.
However it’s possible you’ll surprise, why cybersecurity? What is occurring on this house that creates the required synergies? The reply is that there are two primary drivers for this:
- The rising frequency and class of ransomware assaults have severely impacted organizations, inflicting reputational, monetary, and in some instances, human or essential infrastructure damages
- Underinvestment in cybersecurity instruments and practitioner expertise
These causes are exactly the place laws play a essential position: They goal to handle these gaps by imposing good safety requirements, imposing penalties for non-compliance, and requiring organizations to allocate assets for prevention, detection, and incident response.
Fortuitously, 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 programs within the business house.
Of explicit significance are two main laws rising from the European Union, each designed to considerably enhance cybersecurity resilience and threat administration throughout sectors:
- Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)
- Community and Data Safety Directive (NIS2)
Nonetheless, many organizations face vital challenges relating to implementing these regulatory mandates. Typically, the language utilized in such laws is high-level and lacks prescriptive steering, making it tough to translate necessities into actionable steps. Moreover, organizations might not have the correct instruments, processes or infrastructure in place to successfully implement and operationalize these requirements.
This raises a essential query: How can organizations obtain compliance in a sensible, scalable approach?
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 to the Rescue
NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 provides precious steering for organizations seeking to handle and mitigate cybersecurity dangers. Whereas it doesn’t prescribe particular options, it gives a stable construction for translating high-level enterprise aims into actionable technical necessities.
Right here is the place you may leverage any cybersecurity software utilizing NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 to implement these technical necessities, given the software has the required capabilities and functionalities to handle them.
Enter Cisco Safe Workload.
Cisco Safe Workload is a holistic safety resolution designed to ship in-depth utility workload visibility and safety throughout on-premises and multicloud environments. Safe Workload focuses on three primary use instances:
- Zero Belief Microsegmentation: Utilizing agent and agentless approaches, Safe Workload can uncover workloads based mostly on labels, robotically uncover and recommend segmentation insurance policies based mostly on site visitors flows, validate and take a look at the coverage with none operational influence, and implement the dynamic coverage on a number of enforcement factors corresponding to host-based firewalls, Information Processing Items (DPUs), community firewalls, load balancers, and built-in cloud safety controls.
- Vulnerability Detection and Safety: Using an agent, Safe Workload gives visibility into the applying workload runtime, enabling the detection of susceptible packages and susceptible container photographs. 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 screens operating course of for adjustments in habits and an in depth course of tree and course of snapshot. It detects anomalous habits utilizing MITRE ATT&CK or with customized forensic guidelines. By leveraging Safe Firewall’s Fast Menace Containment, safety of each agent and agentless workloads may be achieved.


As you may see, Safe Workload provides the breadth and depth of capabilities wanted to function a core cybersecurity software. 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 method has change into a sensible basis for implementing zero belief architectures, because it allows the enforcement of least privilege entry on the community stage.
Nonetheless, operationalizing microsegmentation stays a big problem. It requires shut collaboration throughout varied 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 publish “Enterprise Chief’s Information for a Profitable Microsegmentation Challenge” 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 current processes, Safe Workload helps make zero belief achievable and scalable.


Navigating Compliance with the Proper Method and Instruments
Regulatory and compliance mandates may be complicated and difficult to navigate. Nonetheless, with the correct method—translating enterprise necessities into actionable technical controls—and the correct 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, take a look at my Cisco Reside session, the place I showcase stay demos and sensible examples of how this resolution may be utilized to satisfy regulatory necessities successfully.
Need to be taught extra? Take a look at the Cisco Safe Workload product web page.
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