MOCHIKABU
Strategy

Published on 2024-10-05 • 10 Min Read

Transitioning to Managed Services under SLA & DORA

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Financial institutions increasingly delegate IT operations to Managed Service Providers (MSPs). However, under the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), financial firms remain fully responsible for operational resilience, requiring tighter integration and service governance.

Bridging Client Environments and Managed Operations

A resilient operations model establishes clear boundaries between client environments and managed spaces. Dynamic incident detection feeds ITIL ticketing tools, ensuring that incidents are mapped to MSP support desks immediately.

Transitioning operational activities to third-party managed service providers requires aligning vendor agreements with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). Organizations must map vendor supply chains, evaluate operational risks, and establish continuous audit check-gates to guarantee system resilience.

Managed Operations SpaceClient EnvironmentIncident DetectionAPI SyncITIL TicketingSLA OperationsDeskContinuous DORA Audit Log

Key Governance Requirements under DORA

  • Vendor Performance Monitoring: Continuous audit log collection showing MSP compliance with defined SLAs.
  • Business Continuity Testing: Conducting joint disaster recovery drills to verify data integrity and failover procedures.
  • Exit Strategy Management: Preparing migration roadmaps to enable transition back to internal IT or other providers if needed.

SLA Escalation Tiers

To meet the reporting timelines required by DORA Article 14, support escalations must be automated. Incident response is divided into strict time-bound tiers, ensuring critical bugs are escalated to platform engineering within 60 minutes.

Incident SLA Escalation TiersL1 Support DeskTriage < 15 minsL2 SRE TeamRemediation < 30 minsL3 Core PlatformBug Fix < 60 minsAutomated Audit Evidence Captured for DORA Article 14

Structuring Compliant Sourcing Contracts

Sourcing agreements can no longer be simple capacity contracts. They must embed operational resilience KPIs, automated evidence gathering, and clear penalty structures for SLA breaches, ensuring that third-party operations support the institution's regulatory compliance.

Additionally, service level agreements (SLAs) must be converted into dynamic, automated telemetry dashboards. Instead of reviewing monthly paper reports, contract managers monitor system availability and response metrics in real-time, verifying that operational metrics are consistently achieved.

Outsourcing operations does not outsource accountability. Under DORA, a transition succeeds only when resilience and oversight are written into the agreement and provable across the provider boundary at any moment.

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