ENISA NIS360 Report: Boost Cybersecurity Maturity for NIS2 Compliance

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) recently released its NIS360 report, evaluating cybersecurity maturity and criticality of sectors under the NIS2 Directive. The report unsurprisingly identifies electricity, telecoms, and banking as sectors with high maturity, attributable to their long-standing regulatory oversight and consistent security investments.

In contrast, the report places ICT service management, space, public administrations, maritime, health, and gas sectors in the risk zone, highlighting substantial gaps requiring immediate attention. ENISA emphasizes that effective implementation demands coordinated collaboration, detailed sector-specific guidance, and cross-border alignment to strengthen overall cybersecurity resilience across the EU. The agency's findings aim to equip national authorities and policymakers with concrete data to understand sectoral maturity differences and prioritize strategic improvements.

Mature Sectors and Their Practices

Sectors like electricity, telecoms, and banking have developed advanced cybersecurity controls through years of rigorous regulatory compliance and significant security investments. This established maturity enables them to implement comprehensive risk management frameworks addressing both current and emerging cyber threats.

Their well-documented security controls and incident response procedures serve as valuable benchmarks for other sectors. These mature sectors typically maintain formal public-private partnerships with clear information-sharing mechanisms, enhancing their collective defense capabilities. The NIS2 Directive builds on these experiences to establish baseline security requirements adaptable across industries with varying maturity levels.

Sector-Specific Challenges and Improvements

The ICT service management sector faces unique obstacles in achieving NIS2 compliance. Its international operations require navigating multiple, sometimes conflicting regulatory frameworks, creating compliance challenges absent in more localized industries. The sector encompasses providers of various sizes, creating significant disparities in security capabilities and resources. Limited standardization in security controls results in inconsistent protection levels throughout the service chain.

The space sector faces critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities due to its reliance on commercial off-the-shelf components that lack industry-specific security features. This deficiency creates exploitable weaknesses in critical systems, particularly when organizations deploy these components without thorough security assessments.

Public administrations may be able to leverage the EU Cyber Solidarity Act as a funding mechanism to strengthen their cybersecurity posture. This legislation provides financial resources for detection technologies, incident response capabilities, and remediation processes. Organizations with legacy systems can use these funds to implement modern security controls that address current threat landscapes.

Collaboration and Cross-Border Alignment

The report identifies cross-border collaboration as essential for the maritime and health sectors due to their operational interdependence across national boundaries. The maritime sector's global supply chains and interconnected navigation systems create shared vulnerabilities that cannot be effectively addressed through isolated national approaches. Coordinated threat intelligence sharing and standardized incident response protocols enable maritime stakeholders to identify and mitigate threats across multiple jurisdictions.

In healthcare, cross-border information exchange delivers tangible benefits for cybersecurity risk management. The European Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) provides a structured framework for healthcare organizations to exchange actionable security insights and pool resources, strengthening the sector's collective ability to protect critical patient services.

Challenges in National Supervision

The transnational nature of digital infrastructure creates specific implementation challenges for NIS2 requirements:

• Inconsistent interpretation of the directive across member states causes compliance difficulties for multinational organizations
• Organizations must navigate varying requirements while maintaining cohesive security programs

Regulatory Fragmentation Issues

Regulatory fragmentation across EU Member States creates operational barriers to unified cybersecurity approaches:

• Organizations must develop complex compliance matrices to address country-specific legal variations
• Resources are diverted from actual security improvements
• Effective information sharing is hampered

Supervisory Limitations

National supervisory authorities struggle with monitoring cross-border entities due to:

• Resource constraints
• Technical capability gaps

These limitations prevent thorough oversight of multi-jurisdiction operations, creating enforcement inconsistencies that weaken the directive's effectiveness.

Cross-Border Collaboration and Risk-Based Prioritization

The report highlights the need for harmonized controls across Member States using unified frameworks. High-risk sectors will likely receive priority resources based on vulnerability levels.

Strategic Investment and Best Practices

The advanced maturity of electricity, telecoms, and banking sectors indicates a need to strategically redirect investment toward less mature industries. Policymakers should prioritize funding for vulnerable sectors such as healthcare and ICT service management to bolster their cybersecurity capabilities.

Additionally, these mature sectors serve as valuable benchmarks, offering evidence-based models for less developed industries to follow. Sectors with lower maturity ratings now face increasing pressure to implement the proven best practices demonstrated by their more advanced counterparts. This adoption pattern ultimately influences the development of regulatory frameworks and compliance requirements across industries.

Broader Industry Considerations

The maturity gaps identified in the NIS360 report expose critical vulnerabilities, particularly in risk zone sectors like ICT service management and health. These sectors represent high-value targets due to inadequate defenses and inconsistent security implementations.

Without coordinated incident response strategies, organizations suffer longer recovery times, higher financial losses, regulatory penalties, and reputational damage. Weaknesses in one sector create ripple effects throughout connected systems.

Using ENISA's NIS2 Report

High-risk industries can use ENISA's comprehensive report to identify specific weaknesses in their cybersecurity practices, enabling precise gap analysis and smarter prioritization of improvements. The detailed assessment frameworks provided in the report allow organizations to evaluate their current security posture against established industry benchmarks. This evaluation process helps security teams pinpoint critical vulnerabilities that might otherwise remain hidden within complex digital infrastructures, particularly in sectors like healthcare, energy, and transportation where cyber threats pose significant operational risks.

Essential Security Controls Checklist for All Sectors

Regardless of sector or current maturity level, all organizations should implement these fundamental security controls to establish baseline protection against common cyber threats:

Incident Response

• Develop and regularly test incident response plans
• Establish clear roles and responsibilities for security incidents
• Create communication templates for various incident scenarios
• Maintain relationships with external incident response providers
• Document lessons learned after each security incident

Governance

• Conduct annual risk assessments
• Maintain an up-to-date asset inventory
• Develop and enforce security policies and procedures
• Establish security awareness training programs
• Perform regular security compliance audits

Organizations should use this checklist as a starting point, recognizing that sector-specific requirements and threat landscapes will necessitate additional controls tailored to their unique operational contexts.