Digital Experience Assurance: Navigating the Future
Monday 16th December 2024
In today’s digital-first world, organizations face unprecedented challenges in ensuring the seamless delivery of digital experiences. From fluctuating user demands to the complexities of maintaining a robust and reliable infrastructure, the need for a comprehensive approach to Digital Experience Assurance has never been greater.
Understanding Digital Experience Assurance
Digital Experience Assurance (or DXA) is the IT management practice of ensuring that end-users receive a consistent, reliable, and high-quality experience across various digital platforms and services. While most organisations today are likely to be familiar with Digital Experience Monitoring (or DEM), DXA goes beyond traditional monitoring strategies that only provide siloed visibility for networks, infrastructure, and applications. Its primary goals include:
- End-to-End Visibility | Providing comprehensive insights into the user experience across all network environments, including on-premises, cloud, and SaaS environments.
- Proactive Issue Detection | Utilising Artificial Intelligence to identify and address potential disruptions before they impact users.
- Optimised Performance | Continuously improving network performance and user experience by leveraging data and AI to predict and remediate issues.
- Automated Actions | Enabling closed-loop workflows that automate critical actions, reducing the need for manual intervention and accelerating response times.
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)
As the reliance on digital services continues to grow, so does the need for robust operational resilience in the face of cyber threats and disruptions. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (or DORA) is a significant legislative initiative created by the European Union and aimed at enhancing the digital resilience of financial entities.
Note: the UK Financial Conduct Authority is working to create goals and guidelines similar to those within DORA under the P21/3 publication.
DORA sets out a comprehensive regulatory framework to ensure that financial institutions and their service providers can identify, respond to, and recover from disruptions and threats on Information and Communication Technology (or ICT). Its key goals target various aspects of operational resilience to create a more secure and stable financial ecosystem, and include:
- Strengthening ICT Risk Management | DORA mandates that financial entities implement robust ICT risk management frameworks that encompass risk identification, assessment, mitigation, and monitoring. This goal ensures that institutions can proactively manage and mitigate ICT risks before they escalate into significant disruptions.
- Incident Classification, Reporting and Response | Under DORA, financial entities are required to establish effective incident classification, reporting and response mechanisms. This includes timely reporting of significant ICT incidents to relevant authorities and implementing comprehensive response and recovery plans to minimise the impact of disruptions.
- Operational Resilience Testing | DORA mandates regular, formalised operational resilience testing, including scenario-based testing and penetration testing, to evaluate the effectiveness of ICT systems and processes in withstanding various types of disruptions.
- Third-Party Risk Management | Given the increasing reliance on third-party service providers, DORA emphasises the importance of managing risks associated with outsourcing and third-party dependencies. Financial entities must ensure that their service providers adhere to stringent ICT risk management standards.
- Information Sharing and Cooperation | DORA encourages information sharing and cooperation among financial entities, regulators, and other stakeholders to enhance collective resilience against ICT risks and threats.
Cisco ThousandEyes and DORA
Cisco, a global leader in networking and cybersecurity solutions, provides ThousandEyes; a platform that specialises in providing visibility over an organisation’s service components by mapping out and baselining networks and information systems, including those of third-party providers.
Cisco ThousandEyes plays a pivotal role in helping organizations achieve the goals outlined in the Digital Operational Resilience Act, providing financial entities with the tools and capabilities needed to comply with its requirements. Specifically:
- Strengthening ICT Risk Management | Cisco ThousandEyes offers unparalleled visibility into the entire digital service delivery chain. It monitors network performance from the user perspective, identifying performance bottlenecks and potential points of failure.
- Incident Classification, Reporting and Response | Furthermore, Cisco ThousandEyes enables rapid detection of incidents that could impact user experience with its real-time monitoring capabilities. Its detailed analytics provide insights into the nature and cause of disruptions, facilitating timely and accurate incident reporting in compliance with DORA requirements.
- Operational Resilience Testing | In addition, Cisco ThousandEyes facilitates continuous testing of digital infrastructures by simulating user interactions and monitoring their outcomes. This helps organizations to identify vulnerabilities and assess their resilience against disruptions.
- Third-Party Risk Management | Cisco ThousandEyes extends its monitoring capabilities to third-party service providers, ensuring that their performance and resilience measures are up to standard. This comprehensive oversight helps financial institutions adhere to DORA’s requirements for managing third-party risks.
- Information Sharing and Cooperation | Cisco promotes information sharing and cooperation through its active involvement in industry forums and partnerships. Cisco's threat intelligence platform, Talos, gathers and analyses vast amounts of threat data, providing valuable insights to organizations and regulators. By sharing threat intelligence and best practices, Cisco helps financial entities stay informed about emerging risks and collaboratively enhance their resilience against ICT threats.
Beyond DORA: The Future of Digital Resilience
While DORA sets a robust foundation for digital operational resilience, the journey does not end there. As technology continues to evolve, so too must our approaches to ensuring a continued Digital Experience Assurance. Emerging trends such as Generative AI and quantum computing will introduce new challenges and opportunities for resilience.
Conclusion
Digital Experience Assurance is a critical component of the modern digital ecosystem, and its significance is underscored by regulatory frameworks like the Digital Operational Resilience Act.
DXA and DORA represent critical components of a secure and resilient digital ecosystem, and Cisco ThousandEyes plays a pivotal role in supporting these objectives. As the importance of digital resilience is predicted to continue growing, driven by regulatory developments, technological advancements, and the increasing complexity of digital environments and services, hopefully organisations will be able to capitalise on their investments in creating resilient digital infrastructures.
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