Setting Impact Tolerances
A plain account of setting impact tolerances for one important service, what a limit beyond intolerable harm means, and how a firm tests whether the limit holds when disruption strikes.
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258 guides across 20 lines. Each one opens with a service check: the regime reference, the obligation, the start date and who has to act. Page 6 of 7, guides 206 to 246.
Severe but Plausible Scenarios Explained
What severe but plausible scenarios are, and how they are used in practice to test whether an important service can recover before harm becomes intolerable.
Single-Provider Concentration
What happens when many important services depend on one provider or one provider group, and why that risk differs from ordinary supplier dependence in practice for firms.
Sub-Outsourcing and Fourth Parties
Why sub-outsourcing matters under DORA: a chain of providers can hide the party that actually runs a service, and visibility plus contractual flow-down are what keep that chain manageable.
Supervisory Examinations Explained
What a supervisory examination is, what supervisors look for in a service trail, and how a firm can respond helpfully without turning preparation into performance.
Tabletop Exercises That Work
How a tabletop exercise can test judgement and coordination through discussion, injects and disagreement, without touching live systems or live customers.
Technology Concentration
When important services share one platform, component, or connection method, a single technical fault can spread further than any one supplier failure.
Testing After Major Change
Why the period after a major change is when resilience is most at risk, and how testing before, during, and after the change reduces that risk for critical services.
Testing Findings and Remediation
How testing findings become real improvements through ownership, prioritisation, and retesting, and why an unowned finding is the same as an undiscovered weakness.
Testing for Small Entities
How a small financial entity tests proportionately, using supplier evidence well, focusing on its critical functions, and avoiding a programme it cannot sustain.
Third-Party Incident Notification
How third-party incident notification works under DORA: a supplier incident becomes the entity's incident when it affects its service, and cooperation plus clear roles decide how well it is handled.
Third-Party Risk and Data Protection Boundaries
Where DORA third-party risk ends and data protection begins: the same provider may be an ICT supplier and a data processor, and each role needs its own terms, evidence and accountability.
Third-Party Risk Registers
What a third-party risk register is under DORA: a current, service-linked record of providers and risks that supports oversight, incident response and exit, not a list for its own sake.
Threat-led penetration testing (TLPT)
Threat-led penetration testing under DORA tests live production against real threat intelligence, with firm, testers and authorities in defined roles. This pillar explains what makes it different.
Three Lines and Resilience Assurance
The three lines model gives DORA governance a checking structure: operations, risk challenge and assurance. This guide explains each line without collapsing them.
TLPT and the testing authority
The testing authority oversees TLPT under the applicable framework. This guide explains its role, how firms engage with it, and what oversight means for the exercise.
TLPT evidence for supervisors
Supervisors judge TLPT by its evidence. This guide explains what evidence is produced, how it should be organised, and what makes it credible in practice.
TLPT findings and remediation plans
TLPT findings describe attack paths, not grades. This guide explains how to read findings, prioritise them, and build remediation plans that can be tracked to completion.
TLPT for critical functions
Critical functions are the reason TLPT exists. This guide explains how functions are identified, why they shape the test, and what a function-level view reveals.
TLPT frequency and cycles
TLPT is a cycle, not a one-off exercise. This guide explains how cycles are set, what happens between exercises, and how a firm learns from one cycle to the next.
TLPT lessons for the whole firm
A TLPT finding about one function often points to a wider weakness. This guide explains how lessons are generalised, shared, and turned into firm-wide improvement.
TLPT planning and preparation
Preparation determines whether TLPT is safe, realistic and useful. This guide covers governance, safety, communications and the practical steps before testing starts.
TLPT reporting to authorities
Reporting closes the TLPT loop with authorities. This guide explains what is reported, when, how findings are handled, and how follow-up works in practice.
TLPT scoping and target systems
Scoping decides whether TLPT touches the critical functions it exists to protect. This guide explains how target systems are chosen, and how exclusions should be handled.
TLPT testers and independence
Independent testers give TLPT its credibility. This guide explains the skills, separation and working arrangements that testers need, and how firms should work with them.
TLPT threat intelligence
Threat intelligence turns TLPT from a generic test into a realistic one. This guide explains how intelligence is gathered, judged and turned into test scenarios.
TLPT vs penetration testing
TLPT and penetration testing are related but not the same. This guide compares their purpose, scope, method and reporting, and explains when each is appropriate.
Tolerance in Data Loss
What a tolerance in data loss means for one service, how lost, corrupted, or stale data harms users after return, and why recovery of systems is not recovery of data.
Tolerance in Duration
How a tolerance in duration is framed for one service, why length of interruption is only one part of harm, and how timing and user need change what a long stop means.
Tolerance in Volume and Scope
How breadth of users and scale of activity shape a tolerance, why a narrow outage can still cause intolerable harm, and how scope is judged alongside duration.
Tolerances and Customer Harm
How customer harm gives an impact tolerance its meaning, what kinds of customer detriment count, and why harm to customers cannot be reduced to system availability.
Tolerances and Financial Stability Harm
When disruption to one service can harm the wider financial system, how that wider harm differs from customer harm, and why a tolerance must look beyond one firm.
Tolerances and Service Level Agreements
How an impact tolerance differs from a supplier service level agreement, why meeting an SLA does not mean staying inside a tolerance, and how the two are aligned without confusion.
Tolerances for Partial Outages
Why partial outages need their own tolerance thinking, how degraded, inaccurate, or uneven service causes harm, and how a firm judges a service that has not fully stopped.
UK Operational Resilience for Dual-Regulated Firms
Dual-regulated firms under the UK regime: satisfying both FCA and PRA expectations through one coherent service account, without merging regimes or duplicating work blindly.
UK Regime and DORA Comparison
UK operational resilience vs DORA, kept apart: different sources, different units of analysis, different documents, and why copying an answer across regimes fails both.
UK Regime and Governance Expectations
Governance under the UK regime: board ownership of services and tolerances, senior challenge, clear accountability, and self-assessment that a board can actually defend.
UK Regime and Incident Reporting
Incident reporting alongside the UK regime: escalation, user communication, regulator notification under applicable rules, and turning incidents into map and tolerance lessons.
UK Regime and Testing Expectations
Testing expectations under the UK regime: what good scenario, walkthrough and live testing look like, how often testing should recur, and what evidence should remain.
UK Regime and Third-Party Risk
Third-party risk under the UK regime: how supplier failure becomes service failure, and how mapping, testing and oversight keep that link visible for firms.
UK Regime Enforcement and Supervision
Supervision under the UK regime: how FCA and PRA engagement, challenge and follow-up test whether a service account matches testing and incident evidence.