NIS2 Directive

The Directive scopes this deliberately at direct suppliers and service providers, which makes the first artefact an inventory of who those parties are and which of them touch the network and information systems behind the service. From there the entity has to manage the security-related aspects of each relationship: what the supplier may access, what security obligations bind it, what happens on incident, and what happens at exit. Contract terms are the enforcement mechanism, so contracts that predate NIS2 and carry no security clauses are a live gap rather than a legacy inconvenience. Managed service providers and managed security service providers deserve separate attention because they hold privileged access into the estate, which makes their compromise the entity's incident.

Deciding what supply chain measures are appropriate is not left to general judgement. The entity has to take into account the vulnerabilities specific to each direct supplier and service provider, and the overall quality of those parties' products and cybersecurity practices including their secure development procedures. Separately, it must take into account the results of the Union level coordinated security risk assessments of critical supply chains carried out under Article 22(1). That second limb creates an external input the entity has to watch for and respond to: when a coordinated assessment lands on a technology the entity uses, the outcome has to reach the supplier risk decisions rather than stop at a policy team. Evidence of consideration is what is being asked for, including reasoned decisions not to change anything.

A Member State may require essential and important entities to use particular ICT products, ICT services and ICT processes that are certified under a European cybersecurity certification scheme adopted under Article 49 of Regulation (EU) 2019/881, as a way of demonstrating compliance with particular Article 21 requirements. That requirement can arrive either through national transposition or through a Commission delegated act specifying which categories of entity must use certified products or hold a certificate. Member States must also encourage the use of qualified trust services. What binds the entity is therefore conditional and moving: it has to know whether any such requirement applies to it in each Member State whose jurisdiction it falls under, and to hold the conformity evidence where one does. Delegated acts carry an implementation period, so the practical duty is to watch for them rather than to react once the period has run.