Executive Summary

Navigating cybersecurity regulations is a complicated task. Do you find yourself drowning in a sea of regulatory documents? Are you overwhelmed by the sheer number of pages and the intricate terminology they use? Is cybersecurity not a core strength then how do you manage the challenge of interpreting complex regulations while conducting your core business? The challenge of interpreting multiple, often ambiguous documents while collecting and assessing internal data adds significant pressure.

This whitepaper explores these challenges and introduces a practical solution: Cybersecurity by GLBNXT. By providing direct access to over 80 relevant regulatory documents and offering interactive benchmarking tools, GLBNXT helps you to navigate this complex environment and can reduce compliance-related workloads by 70%. With clarity and practicality at its core, this tool empowers specialists to focus on safeguarding their organizations rather than getting lost in paperwork.

Introduction

Cybersecurity compliance is no longer optional. With regulations like GDPR, NIS2, and industry-specific standards becoming increasingly stringent, organizations face immense pressure to meet these requirements. For governments, educational institutions, and non-digital businesses, the task is even more challenging, as digital skills and consequently cybersecurity may not be their primary focus.

These organizations often struggle with limited resources and expertise. Compliance managers are left to decipher complex regulations, assess organizational data, and ensure alignment—all while balancing their day-to-day responsibilities. The result? Stress, inefficiency, and increased risk of non-compliance.

Navigating the space

European companies must adhere to several cybersecurity laws and regulations to ensure compliance and resilience. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs data protection and privacy, requiring lawful data processing, prompt breach notification within 72 hours, and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) for high-risk activities. The NIS2 Directive ensures cybersecurity for essential services and critical infrastructure, mandating robust risk management, incident reporting within 24-72 hours, and supply chain security. The EU Cybersecurity Act establishes a voluntary certification framework for IT products and strengthens ENISA, the EU cybersecurity agency. The ePrivacy Directive and the proposed ePrivacy Regulation focus on protecting electronic communications, emphasizing cookie consent, communication confidentiality, and regulation of direct marketing. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) enhances financial sector resilience through ICT risk management, operational testing, and third-party risk monitoring. For electronic payments, the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) enforces strong customer authentication and mandates incident reporting. Industry-specific rules such as the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR), UNECE WP.29 R155 for automotive cybersecurity, and the Critical Entities Resilience Directive address tailored needs, while overarching initiatives like the Budapest Convention combat cybercrime. These laws collectively underline the critical importance of risk management, resilience, and accountability in Europe’s digital ecosystem.

Plotting all these regulations against your organization's processes is becoming increasingly complex.

Turning Complexity into Strategic Advantage

Cybersecurity compliance isn’t just about avoiding fines—it’s about building resilience, trust, and operational efficiency. While the regulatory landscape may seem daunting, organizations that approach compliance proactively can turn it into a competitive edge. Let’s break down why compliance is non-negotiable and how getting it right saves time, money, and stress.

The Rising Tide of Regulations

The EU’s cybersecurity framework is expanding rapidly to counter sophisticated threats. For example:

• NIS 2 Directive (2024) : Now covers 18 sectors, including SMEs in critical industries like chemicals and ICT services. Compliance requires documented security policies, incident response plans, and business continuity strategies.

• Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) : Mandates cybersecurity risk assessments for all hardware/software products sold in the EU, with incident reporting within 24 hours and 10-year documentation retention.

• DORA (2025) : Requires financial institutions to demonstrate digital operational resilience, including rigorous ICT risk management and third-party oversight.

These rules aren’t arbitrary—they reflect the reality that 61% of organizations globally faced ransomware attacks in 2023 (Splunk). Compliance ensures businesses aren’t just reacting to threats but systematically mitigating them.

The Cost of Complacency vs. The Value of Control

Yes, compliance demands effort. But compare that to the alternatives:

• Cybercrime’s Staggering Price Tag : By 2025, cybercrime will cost the world $10.5 trillion annually—more than the GDP of most countries (TechChannel).

• Regulatory Penalties: Fines under NIS 2 (up to €10M or 2% of turnover) and the CRA (up to €15M or 2.5% of global turnover) can cripple SMEs.

• Operational Disruption: A single supply chain attack could cost $60M in 2025 (Kiteworks), not counting reputational damage or customer attrition.

• The good news? Organizations that invest in compliance upfront see long-term savings. For instance:

• Automating risk assessments and documentation (e.g., using tools like Vanta or Drata) reduces manual workloads by 30–50% .

• Aligning policies with frameworks like NIST or ISO 27001 streamlines audits and cuts drafting time by 40%.

• Training employees to spot phishing attacks—a top breach vector—can prevent 90% of incidents (IBM).

Compliance as a Force Multiplier

The EU’s €7.5B investment in cybersecurity infrastructure (2021–2027) signals a collective push toward resilience. By mirroring this commitment, businesses can:

1. Future-Proof Operations: DORA’s incident reporting requirements, for example, force financial firms to build systems that withstand outages—a win for customer trust.

2. Unlock Market Access: Compliance with the CRA’s certification standards allows companies to sell products across the EU’s 450 million-person market without friction.

3. Build Stakeholder Confidence: Transparent compliance frameworks attract investors and partners wary of cyber risks.

A Roadmap, Not a Roadblock

Compliance isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress. Start small:

• Prioritize High-Impact Controls: Encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and vendor risk assessments address 80% of common vulnerabilities.

• Leverage Shared resources: ENISA’s certification frameworks and EU-funded cybersecurity initiatives offer free guidance.

• Empower Teams: Train compliance officers and IT teams to collaborate early, avoiding last-minute scrambles before audits.

As cybersecurity spending in Europe surges toward $212B globally by 2025 (Splunk), organizations that view compliance as a strategic priority—not a burden—will save millions in avoided fines, breaches, and operational downtime.

Key Takeaway

Compliance is a journey, not a destination. By embedding it into your organization’s DNA, you transform regulatory complexity into operational clarity. The effort required today pales in comparison to the cost of tomorrow’s breaches. With the right tools, processes, and mindset, compliance becomes less about “checking boxes” and more about building a safer, smarter business.

Why It Pays to Get It Right

Cybersecurity compliance is not a checkbox exercise—it’s a strategic exercise that demands collaboration, investment, and vigilance. Organizations often underestimate the effort required to align with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS, only to face hefty fines, legal battles, and reputational damage when breaches occur. Here’s what leaders need to understand about the real cost of compliance—and why doing it well is far cheaper than cutting corners.

The Effort: A Team Sport

Building a compliant cybersecurity framework is a cross-functional effort that impacts every layer of an organization. For a mid-sized company, this typically involves:

• 3–5 core team members (e.g., compliance officers, IT leads, legal counsel) dedicating 15–20 hours per week for 3–4 months to draft policies, assess risks, and implement controls.

• 10–15 stakeholders (executives, HR, finance, vendors) contributing insights during workshops, audits, and training sessions.

• 100+ hours of collaborative work —analyzing regulations, writing policies, and training employees—to ensure no critical gaps remain.

This isn’t just an IT problem. HR must enforce access controls. Finance must secure payment data. Every employee plays a role in avoiding phishing scams or safeguarding sensitive information. Compliance, when done well, becomes part of the organizational DNA.

Non-Compliance: A Financial Time Bomb

The consequences of shortcuts are severe. GDPR violations can cost up to 4% of global revenue in fines (e.g., Amazon’s $886 million fine in 2021). The average data breach now costs $4.45 million. That is excluding long-term customer distrust or stock price drops. Lawsuits and regulatory investigations drain resources—Equifax spent $1.4 billion post-breach on settlements and upgrades.

By contrast, proactive compliance is a fraction of these costs. Simple steps such as deploying multi-factor authentication (MFA) or encrypting data might require upfront effort, but these controls prevent exponentially larger losses.

Efficiency Wins: Invest in Core Roles

Organizations that empower key roles save time and money. A skilled compliance officer can streamline policy development using frameworks like NIST, cutting drafting time by 30–40%. Automating vulnerability scans implemented by IT Security Teams or incident response reduces manual workloads and human error. And early regulatory guidance avoids costly missteps (e.g., improperly handling EU data under GDPR).

For example, a healthcare provider that trains its staff to spot phishing attacks could prevent a ransomware incident costing millions. A retailer that negotiates cybersecurity clauses with vendors avoids third-party breaches. In the end these efforts compound into long-term savings.

Prevention is better than cure

Cybersecurity compliance is not a burden—it’s an insurance policy. The upfront investment in policies, training, and tools pales in comparison to the financial and reputational fallout of a breach. When everyone, from interns to executives, takes ownership of compliance, organizations transform risk into resilience.

The choice is clear: build a culture of compliance now, or pay a far steeper price later.

The Compliance Accelerator: GLBNXT

Navigating the EU’s evolving cybersecurity regulations—from NIS 2 and DORA to the Cyber Resilience Act—requires precision, agility, and cross-functional collaboration. For compliance officers, manually benchmarking policies against dozens of requirements, reconciling fragmented documents, and drafting action plans is not just time-consuming—it’s a recipe for oversight. This is where GLBNXT steps in, turning regulatory complexity into a structured, actionable roadmap.

How GLBNXT cuts effort up to 70%

Automate Compliance Benchmarking

Our automated compliance benchmarking system addresses one of the most time-consuming challenges in cybersecurity compliance. While manually cross-referencing policies with regulations like NIS 2 or GDPR traditionally takes weeks and risks missing critical gaps, GLBNXT transforms this process by scanning your documents—including policies, contracts, and incident reports—and automatically mapping them to over 80 EU and global regulations in just hours. The system flags any gaps and provides prioritized recommendations, dramatically reducing compliance gap analysis time from 4-6 weeks to just 2-3 days.

Multi-Perspective Risk Assessments

One of the biggest challenges organizations face is identifying risks that are hidden across different departments. For example, while HR might handle access controls, IT manages encryption standards, creating potential blind spots. Our tool addresses this by conducting comprehensive analyses through legal, technical, and operational perspectives simultaneously. This ensures all policies align perfectly with frameworks like ISO 27001 or DORA. Based on our pilot data, this systematic approach has proven highly effective, reducing human error by 70% compared to traditional manual reviews.

Unify document handling

Managing compliance documentation is often chaotic, with policies scattered across emails, shared drives, and legacy systems. GLBNXT addresses this challenge by ingesting documents in any format—including PDFs, Word files, and spreadsheets—to create a single source of truth. The system harmonizes requirements across regulations like the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS 2, resulting in a 50% reduction in document consolidation time.

Create actionable plans

Our AI-driven action planning system addresses one of the biggest challenges teams face after identifying compliance gaps: determining what to do next. The tool streamlines this process by automatically generating customized action plans that include everything from vulnerability patching to vendor contract updates. Each plan comes complete with deadlines, team assignments, and cost estimates. This automated approach dramatically improves efficiency, transforming what used to be weeks of planning into just hours of work and helping organizations achieve compliance 3-6 months faster than traditional methods.

Switch to continuous monitoring

Continuous compliance monitoring addresses a critical vulnerability in traditional annual audits, which leave organizations exposed to evolving threats throughout the year. Our solution enables organizations to conduct efficient quarterly "mini-audits" that can be completed in days rather than months, featuring real-time dashboards that track progress against NIS 2, DORA, and other standards. This proactive approach not only enhances security but also delivers significant financial benefits, reducing audit preparation costs by 30-50% annually.

Strategic Advantages

For organizations that want to become leaders in their respective space, GLBNXT can help you to push the boundaries. Our product is fully scalable, meaning that you can adapt to new regulations (e.g., future EU AI Act) without overhauling your process. You can use our unified reporting to enhance stakeholder involvement. Use our reports to generate visual reports simplify board updates, demonstrating ROI on compliance investments. Finally, proactive gap closure reduces breach risks, protecting agains losses in global cybercrime.

How GLBNXT can benefit your organization.

A mid-sized financial institution using GLBNXT can achieve full DORA readiness in 8 weeks (vs. an industry average of 6 months), avoiding potential fines of up to 2.5% of global turnover . If you use GLBNXT to streamline NIS 2 compliance across 12 subsidiaries could easily save up to 200+ hours of manual work.

GLBNXT

GLBNXT isn’t just a tool—it’s a force multiplier for compliance teams. By automating repetitive tasks, unifying disjointed processes, and providing clarity in complexity, it helps organizations save hundreds of hours and thousands of euros annually. In an era where cyber resilience is synonymous with business survival, this isn’t just efficiency—it’s existential.

With the right technology, compliance stops being a cost center and becomes a catalyst for trust, agility, and growth. The question isn’t whether you can afford to implement GLBNXT—it’s whether you can afford not to.

To explore how GLBNXT can tailor these solutions to your organization, contact@glbnxt.com or sign up for early access.

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