New EU Cybersecurity Rules to Ensure More Secure Hardware and Software Products

The European Commission presented today a proposal for a new Cyber Resilience Act to protect consumers and businesses from products with inadequate security features. A first-ever EU-wide legislation of its kind, it introduces mandatory cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements, throughout their whole lifecycle.

With ransomware attacks hitting an organisation every 11 seconds around the globe and the estimated global annual cost of cybercrime reaching €5.5 trillion in 2021 (Joint Research Centre report (2020): “Cybersecurity – Our Digital Anchor, a European perspective”), ensuring a high level of cybersecurity and reducing vulnerabilities in digital products – one of the main avenues for successful attacks – is more important than ever.

With the growth in smart and connected products, a cybersecurity incident in one product can have an impact on the entire supply chain, possibly leading to severe disruption of economic and social activities across the internal market, undermining security or even becoming life-threatening.

The measures proposed today are based on the New Legislative Framework for EU product legislation and will lay down:

(a) rules for the placing on the market of products with digital elements to ensure their cybersecurity;

(b) essential requirements for the design, development and production of products with digital elements, and obligations for economic operators in relation to these products;

(c) essential requirements for the vulnerability handling processes put in place by manufacturers to ensure the cybersecurity of products with digital elements during the whole life cycle, and obligations for economic operators in relation to these processes. Manufacturers will also have to report actively exploited vulnerabilities and incidents;

(d) rules on market surveillance and enforcement.

The new rules will rebalance responsibility towards manufacturers, who must ensure conformity with security requirements of products with digital elements that are made available on the EU market. As a result, they will benefit consumers and citizens, as well as businesses using digital products, by enhancing the transparency of the security properties and promoting trust in products with digital elements, as well as by ensuring better protection of their fundamental rights, such as privacy and data protection.

While other jurisdictions around the world look into addressing these issues, the Cyber Resilience Act is likely to become an international point of reference, beyond the EU’s internal market. EU standards based on the Cyber Resilience Act will facilitate its implementation and will be an asset for the EU cybersecurity industry in global markets.

The proposed regulation will apply to all products that are connected either directly or indirectly to another device or network. There are some exceptions for products, for which cybersecurity requirements are already set out in existing EU rules, for example on medical devices, aviation or cars.

Next Steps

It is now for the European Parliament and the Council to examine the draft Cyber Resilience Act. Once adopted, economic operators and Member States will have two years to adapt to the new requirements. An exception to this rule is the reporting obligation on manufacturers for actively exploited vulnerabilities and incidents, which would apply already one year from the date of entry into force, since they require fewer organisational adjustments than the other new obligations. The Commission will regularly review the Cyber Resilience Act and report on its functioning.