NIS2: Why Cyber Risk Has Become a Top Priority for Executive Leadership Across the EU 

Across the European Union, the cyberthreat landscape has intensified significantly. According to the ENISA Threat Landscape 2025, the EU registered 4,875 verified cybersecurity incidents between July 2024 and June 2025. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks made up 77% of all recorded incidents, largely driven by hacktivist activity, while ransomware remained the most disruptive and economically damaging threat across the EU. Phishing accounted for roughly 60% of initial intrusion attempts, and vulnerability exploitation for about 21%. 

These findings show clearly: Cyber risk is no longer just an IT issue; it is a strategic business risk. Threat actors across Europe are increasingly exploiting organizational blind spots, supply chain dependencies, and inconsistent governance structures. ENISA highlights how attackers are professionalizing rapidly, weaponizing vulnerabilities within days, and leveraging AI-enhanced tools to scale their operations. 

Against this backdrop, the NIS2 Directive elevates cyber-risk governance to the executive level. It requires organizations to implement structured risk management, clear accountability mechanisms, and transparent decision-making processes. For companies operating in the EU, NIS2 compliance is not simply about meeting regulatory requirements; it is a cornerstone of long-term organizational resilience. 

What NIS2 specifically requires – and why risk management is at the center 

The NIS2 Directive is not an IT security program, but a regulatory framework that treats cyber risks as enterprise level risks. It requires all covered entities in the EU to implement structured, organization-wide cybersecurity and risk-management measures, aligned with harmonized minimum standards defined by the Directive and its accompanying Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 (sector-specific requirements vary by Member State during transposition). The objective is not to check off isolated security controls, but to build a verifiable system of risk management, governance, and reporting processes.  

Auditability is key to NIS2 compliance: organizations must demonstrate that cyber risks are identified, prioritized, treated, and continuously monitored, and that responsibilities and decisions are clearly documented. This is why executive leadership is explicitly accountable under NIS2. Management must ensure that cybersecurity is an integral part of business operations and enterprise risk management. This includes the mandatory training requirement for executive leaders. 

In practical terms: governance, risk management, incident handling, third-party oversight, and documentation must function as a coherent, end-to-end system. While IT and security teams carry out the technical implementation, the organization must define who decides, how priorities are set, and how residual risks are accepted or rejected.  

Three verifiable outcomes for risk management under NIS2 

To prevent NIS2 requirements from remaining abstract, it helps to look at what auditors and supervisory authorities will expect to see in practice. Effective NIS2 compliance hinges on three core, demonstrable outcomes: 

1. A cyber-risk register with a clean scope and clear ownership 
   It must map critical processes, relevant systems, and dependencies, with each risk assigned to an accountable risk owner. The risk assessment follows an all-hazards approach, covering not only cyberattacks but also outages, misconfigurations, human error, and physical or environmental threats. 

2. A prioritized risk-treatment plan 
   This plan is driven by defined risk tolerances and thresholds set at the management level. It translates identified risks into measures with responsible owners, timelines, and status indicators. Residual risks cannot remain implicit. They must be consciously documented, including justification, approval, and the validity period. 

3. A reporting and evidence package enabling executive oversight 
   NIS2 requires organizations to maintain a structured reporting and documentation framework that enables leadership to steer cyber-risk decisions. This includes versioned risk analyses and treatment plans, evidence of tests and exercises, and documented approvals and decisions. A functional incident-response and notification workflow must also be in place, including classification and escalation paths. 

NIS2 timeline and implementation across the EU

NIS2 entered into force as an EU Directive in January 2023. The deadline for Member States to transpose the Directive into national law was October 2024. In the same month, the Commission Implementation Regulation entered into force, detailing requirements for parts of the digital sector, such as thresholds for significant incidents and specific security and risk-management measures. 

National implementation across EU Member States 

Because NIS2 is a Directive, each EU Member State is required to transpose it into national law, defining: 

• which entities are classified as essential or important 
• supervisory authorities and enforcement mechanisms 
• national reporting procedures and timelines 
• sector-specific requirements and penalties 
• registration obligations (often including a 24/7 contact point) 

While the core obligations are harmonized across the EU, the exact legal form, supervisory approach, and enforcement timelines vary by Member State. Organizations operating in multiple EU countries must therefore ensure cross-border compliance with each national implementation. 

For organizations, the critical takeaway is this: NIS2’s substantive requirements apply from the moment the national law enters into force in each country. Delayed preparation carries significant risk, especially across areas that cannot be implemented last-minute: scoping and affectedness analysis, establishing a NIS2 compliance program with governance structures, documented risk-management processes including reporting workflows, and prepared incident-response and notification procedures.

Implementing NIS2 structurally in five steps 

A practical starting point is a clear, five-step approach that first establishes decision making capability before moving into technical implementation. The goal is to build a system that is strategic, repeatable, and audit-ready, rather than simply working through isolated security measures. 

1. Determine affectedness and scope 

Begin by assessing which entities, services, business units, and locations fall within the scope of NIS2. This scoping exercise provides the foundation for all subsequent compliance work. At the same time, establish the governance framework such as roles, responsibilities, and escalation paths, to prevent uncertainty or disputes later in the project. 

2. Define governance and responsibilities

Define risk ownership, decision rights, and escalation paths. This includes aligning interfaces between executive leadership, IT security, compliance, legal, and business units. A NIS2-aligned reporting structure should support data-driven decision-making, not just status updates. 

3. Conduct a current-state analysis and gap assessment  

Evaluate your organization’s maturity against the NIS2 requirements, especially cyber-risk management, incident response, third-party oversight, and documentation. The result should be a prioritized gap list with clear risk-justification.

4. Prioritize and implement the measures plan  

Translate the identified gaps into an actionable plan with accountable owners, milestones, and dependencies. Prioritize measures based on risk and business impact, not departmental preferences. Schedule necessary tests, exercises, and NIS2-compliant notification workflows. 

5. Establish operations and continuous improvement 

NIS2 is not confined to this project. To ensure sustainable compliance, continuous monitoring, regular reporting, audits, tests, and systematic evaluation must be in place. This ensures that effectiveness remains verifiable, and that adjustments can be made in a targeted and controlled manner. 

Strengthen NIS2 compliance through governance-driven cyber-risk management 

NIS2 requires organizations to treat cyber risks like any other material enterprise risk. This shifts the focus to governance, accountability, decision-making processes, and transparency. Organizations that implement NIS2 successfully establish a demonstrably reliable cyber-risk-management system while strengthening their overall resilience.