Secure Remote Access for DORA Compliance
Meet the operational resilience requirements of the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act by securing network edge access with Loxada.
The Problem
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) places a clear obligation on financial entities and their critical ICT service providers to ensure their entire digital infrastructure, including remote access points, is secure, resilient, and tightly controlled.
While most DORA programmes focus on internal systems, third-party providers, and incident reporting, many organisations overlook how staff, contractors, and board members connect remotely to sensitive data and systems. This is a blind spot in most ICT risk frameworks.
VPNs may secure traffic in transit, but they do nothing to protect against risks originating from the local network. A compromised home router, misconfigured Wi-Fi in a serviced office, or a spoofed hotspot at a hotel can all serve as attack vectors, even if the device utilises endpoint protection or remote desktop tools.
Under DORA, organisations must show that they’ve accounted for all parts of their digital environment, including edge connections they don’t directly manage.
Loxada’s Solution
Loxada offers a practical and low-overhead approach to meeting DORA’s technical resilience expectations, particularly in areas such as network access control, system segmentation, and secure communication channels.
Our secure, managed routers create an isolated corporate network that connects via an always-on, encrypted tunnel to your infrastructure, thereby bypassing the risks presented by local networks entirely. They are pre-configured, tamper-resistant, and centrally updated, requiring no technical knowledge from the user.
Key features include:
- Secure connectivity from any location
- Staff can work from home, client offices, hotels, or co-working spaces without exposing the organisation to unnecessary risk
- Hardware-enforced network separation
- Devices connected to a Loxada router are shielded from the local network, even if that network is compromised
- Automatic updates and configuration integrity
- Firmware updates are centrally managed. Devices can’t be modified by users and reset to a known-good state even after a factory reset
- Subscription-linked control
- Access can be centrally revoked by cancelling the device subscription, removing the need for manual tracking
This provides compliance and IT teams with a consistent and controllable method of securing external access, aligning with DORA’s emphasis on operational continuity and control.
Benefits and Use Cases
DORA applies to over 22,000 financial and ICT entities across the EU and requires a significant uplift in digital resilience practices. Loxada provides immediate coverage for some of the more practical challenges that are otherwise difficult to solve.
Common scenarios include:
- Home-based employees in finance or risk roles
- Ensuring staff handling trading data, internal systems, or client records are connecting from secure, known-good networks
- Senior executives and board members
- Providing a consistent and secure access point for staff who are often excluded from day-to-day IT onboarding processes
- Third-party contractors and remote partners
- Extending a secure access method to ICT service providers or regulated third parties without overburdening internal IT
- Business continuity and cyber incident response
- Maintaining a fallback route for critical staff to continue working during partial outages or isolation events
Loxada offers a clear, documentable control point that reduces the risk of unauthorised access, lateral movement attacks, or unmonitored data exposure through unmanaged edge environments.
Why It Matters for DORA Compliance
DORA isn’t just about data protection; it’s about ensuring the resilience and continuity of critical financial functions. Key requirements include:
- ICT risk management frameworks
- Secure and resilient network and information systems
- Incident prevention, detection, and recovery
- Third-party risk control
- Auditability and oversight of remote access points
Loxada supports these goals by enabling secure, segmentable access from the edge of your network, where traditional tools like VPNs and endpoint protection may not be enough.
Because Loxada provides a hardware-based, policy-enforced layer of defence, it reduces reliance on user training and eliminates the inconsistency of software-only security models. This makes it a strong fit for financial entities that need to demonstrate both effective protection and practical resilience.