Article 23 Reporting obligations

1. Each Member State shall ensure that essential and important entities notify, without undue delay, its CSIRT or, where applicable, its competent authority in accordance with paragraph 4 of any incident that has a significant impact on the provision of their services as referred to in paragraph 3 (significant incident). Where appropriate, entities concerned shall notify, without undue delay, the recipients of their services of significant incidents that are likely to adversely affect the provision of those services. Each Member State shall ensure that those entities report, inter alia, any information enabling the CSIRT or, where applicable, the competent authority to determine any cross-border impact of the incident. The mere act of notification shall not subject the notifying entity to increased liability.
2. Where the entities concerned notify the competent authority of a significant incident under the first subparagraph, the Member State shall ensure that that competent authority forwards the notification to the CSIRT upon receipt.
3. In the case of a cross-border or cross-sectoral significant incident, Member States shall ensure that their single points of contact are provided in due time with relevant information notified in accordance with paragraph 4.
1. Where applicable, Member States shall ensure that essential and important entities communicate, without undue delay, to the recipients of their services that are potentially affected by a significant cyber threat any measures or remedies that those recipients are able to take in response to that threat. Where appropriate, the entities shall also inform those recipients of the significant cyber threat itself.
1. An incident shall be considered to be significant if:
  1. it has caused or is capable of causing severe operational disruption of the services or financial loss for the entity concerned;
  2. it has affected or is capable of affecting other natural or legal persons by causing considerable material or non-material damage.
1. Member States shall ensure that, for the purpose of notification under paragraph 1, the entities concerned submit to the CSIRT or, where applicable, the competent authority:
  1. without undue delay and in any event within 24 hours of becoming aware of the significant incident, an early warning, which, where applicable, shall indicate whether the significant incident is suspected of being caused by unlawful or malicious acts or could have a cross-border impact;
  2. without undue delay and in any event within 72 hours of becoming aware of the significant incident, an incident notification, which, where applicable, shall update the information referred to in point (a) and indicate an initial assessment of the significant incident, including its severity and impact, as well as, where available, the indicators of compromise;
  3. upon the request of a CSIRT or, where applicable, the competent authority, an intermediate report on relevant status updates;
  4. a final report not later than one month after the submission of the incident notification under point (b), including the following:
    a detailed description of the incident, including its severity and impact;
    the type of threat or root cause that is likely to have triggered the incident;
    applied and ongoing mitigation measures;
    where applicable, the cross-border impact of the incident;
  5. in the event of an ongoing incident at the time of the submission of the final report referred to in point (d), Member States shall ensure that entities concerned provide a progress report at that time and a final report within one month of their handling of the incident.
2. By way of derogation from the first subparagraph, point (b), a trust service provider shall, with regard to significant incidents that have an impact on the provision of its trust services, notify the CSIRT or, where applicable, the competent authority, without undue delay and in any event within 24 hours of becoming aware of the significant incident.
1. The CSIRT or the competent authority shall provide, without undue delay and where possible within 24 hours of receiving the early warning referred to in paragraph 4, point (a), a response to the notifying entity, including initial feedback on the significant incident and, upon request of the entity, guidance or operational advice on the implementation of possible mitigation measures. Where the CSIRT is not the initial recipient of the notification referred to in paragraph 1, the guidance shall be provided by the competent authority in cooperation with the CSIRT. The CSIRT shall provide additional technical support if the entity concerned so requests. Where the significant incident is suspected to be of criminal nature, the CSIRT or the competent authority shall also provide guidance on reporting the significant incident to law enforcement authorities.
1. Where appropriate, and in particular where the significant incident concerns two or more Member States, the CSIRT, the competent authority or the single point of contact shall inform, without undue delay, the other affected Member States and ENISA of the significant incident. Such information shall include the type of information received in accordance with paragraph 4. In so doing, the CSIRT, the competent authority or the single point of contact shall, in accordance with Union or national law, preserve the entity’s security and commercial interests as well as the confidentiality of the information provided.
1. Where public awareness is necessary to prevent a significant incident or to deal with an ongoing significant incident, or where disclosure of the significant incident is otherwise in the public interest, a Member State’s CSIRT or, where applicable, its competent authority, and, where appropriate, the CSIRTs or the competent authorities of other Member States concerned, may, after consulting the entity concerned, inform the public about the significant incident or require the entity to do so.
1. At the request of the CSIRT or the competent authority, the single point of contact shall forward notifications received pursuant to paragraph 1 to the single points of contact of other affected Member States.
1. The single point of contact shall submit to ENISA every three months a summary report, including anonymised and aggregated data on significant incidents, incidents, cyber threats and near misses notified in accordance with paragraph 1 of this Article and with Article 30. In order to contribute to the provision of comparable information, ENISA may adopt technical guidance on the parameters of the information to be included in the summary report. ENISA shall inform the Cooperation Group and the CSIRTs network about its findings on notifications received every six months.
1. The CSIRTs or, where applicable, the competent authorities shall provide to the competent authorities under Directive (EU) 2022/2557 information about significant incidents, incidents, cyber threats and near misses notified in accordance with paragraph 1 of this Article and with Article 30 by entities identified as critical entities under Directive (EU) 2022/2557.
1. The Commission may adopt implementing acts further specifying the type of information, the format and the procedure of a notification submitted pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Article and to Article 30 and of a communication submitted pursuant to paragraph 2 of this Article.
2. By 17 October 2024, the Commission shall, with regard to DNS service providers, TLD name registries, cloud computing service providers, data centre service providers, content delivery network providers, managed service providers, managed security service providers, as well as providers of online marketplaces, of online search engines and of social networking services platforms, adopt implementing acts further specifying the cases in which an incident shall be considered to be significant as referred to in paragraph 3. The Commission may adopt such implementing acts with regard to other essential and important entities.
3. The Commission shall exchange advice and cooperate with the Cooperation Group on the draft implementing acts referred to in the first and second subparagraphs of this paragraph in accordance with Article 14(4), point (e).
4. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 39(2).

Relevant recitals

Recital 83 Responsibility regardless of outsourcing

Essential and important entities should ensure the security of the network and information systems which they use in their activities. Those systems are primarily private network and information systems managed by the essential and important entities’ internal IT staff or the security of which has been outsourced. The cybersecurity risk-management measures and reporting obligations laid down in this Directive should apply to the relevant essential and important entities regardless of whether those entities maintain their network and information systems internally or outsource the maintenance thereof.

Recital 101 Multi-stage incident reporting approach

This Directive lays down a multiple-stage approach to the reporting of significant incidents in order to strike the right balance between, on the one hand, swift reporting that helps mitigate the potential spread of significant incidents and allows essential and important entities to seek assistance, and, on the other, in-depth reporting that draws valuable lessons from individual incidents and improves over time the cyber resilience of individual entities and entire sectors. In that regard, this Directive should include the reporting of incidents that, based on an initial assessment carried out by the entity concerned, could cause severe operational disruption of the services or financial loss for that entity or affect other natural or legal persons by causing considerable material or non-material damage. Such initial assessment should take into account, inter alia, the affected network and information systems, in particular their importance in the provision of the entity’s services, the severity and technical characteristics of a cyber threat and any underlying vulnerabilities that are being exploited as well as the entity’s experience with similar incidents. Indicators such as the extent to which the functioning of the service is affected, the duration of an incident or the number of affected recipients of services could play an important role in identifying whether the operational disruption of the service is severe.

Recital 102 Early warning, incident notification and final report

Where essential or important entities become aware of a significant incident, they should be required to submit an early warning without undue delay and in any event within 24 hours. That early warning should be followed by an incident notification. The entities concerned should submit an incident notification without undue delay and in any event within 72 hours of becoming aware of the significant incident, with the aim, in particular, of updating information submitted through the early warning and indicating an initial assessment of the significant incident, including its severity and impact, as well as indicators of compromise, where available. A final report should be submitted not later than one month after the incident notification. The early warning should only include the information necessary to make the CSIRT, or where applicable the competent authority, aware of the significant incident and allow the entity concerned to seek assistance, if required. Such early warning, where applicable, should indicate whether the significant incident is suspected of being caused by unlawful or malicious acts, and whether it is likely to have a cross-border impact. Member States should ensure that the obligation to submit that early warning, or the subsequent incident notification, does not divert the notifying entity’s resources from activities related to incident handling that should be prioritised, in order to prevent incident reporting obligations from either diverting resources from significant incident response handling or otherwise compromising the entity’s efforts in that respect. In the event of an ongoing incident at the time of the submission of the final report, Member States should ensure that entities concerned provide a progress report at that time, and a final report within one month of their handling of the significant incident.

Recital 103 Communication of significant cyber threats

Where applicable, essential and important entities should communicate, without undue delay, to their service recipients any measures or remedies that they can take to mitigate the resulting risks from a significant cyber threat. Those entities should, where appropriate and in particular where the significant cyber threat is likely to materialise, also inform their service recipients of the threat itself. The requirement to inform those recipients of significant cyber threats should be met on a best efforts basis but should not discharge those entities from the obligation to take, at their own expense, appropriate and immediate measures to prevent or remedy any such threats and restore the normal security level of the service. The provision of such information about significant cyber threats to the service recipients should be free of charge and drafted in easily comprehensible language.

Recital 105 Voluntary reporting of cyber threats

A proactive approach to cyber threats is a vital component of cybersecurity risk management that should enable the competent authorities to effectively prevent cyber threats from materialising into incidents that may cause considerable material or non-material damage. For that purpose, the notification of cyber threats is of key importance. To that end, entities are encouraged to report on a voluntary basis cyber threats.

Recital 106 Technical means for simplify reporting

In order to simplify the reporting of information required under this Directive as well as to decrease the administrative burden for entities, Member States should provide technical means such as a single entry point, automated systems, online forms, user-friendly interfaces, templates, dedicated platforms for the use of entities, regardless of whether they fall within the scope of this Directive, for the submission of the relevant information to be reported. Union funding supporting the implementation of this Directive, in particular within the Digital Europe programme, established by Regulation (EU) 2021/694 of the European Parliament and of the Council(²¹)Regulation (EU) 2021/694 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2021 establishing the Digital Europe Programme and repealing Decision (EU) 2015/2240 (OJ L 166, 11.5.2021, p. 1)., could include support for single entry points. Furthermore, entities are often in a situation where a particular incident, because of its features, needs to be reported to various authorities as a result of notification obligations included in various legal instruments. Such cases create additional administrative burden and could also lead to uncertainties with regard to the format and procedures of such notifications. Where a single entry point is established, Member States are encouraged also to use that single entry point for notifications of security incidents required under other Union law, such as Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Directive 2002/58/EC. The use of such single entry point for reporting of security incidents under Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Directive 2002/58/EC should not affect the application of the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Directive 2002/58/EC, in particular those relating to the independence of the authorities referred to therein. ENISA, in cooperation with the Cooperation Group, should develop common notification templates by means of guidelines to simplify and streamline the information to be reported under Union law and decrease the administrative burden on notifying entities.

Recital 107 Reporting incidents to law enforcement

Where it is suspected that an incident is related to serious criminal activities under Union or national law, Member States should encourage essential and important entities, on the basis of applicable criminal proceedings rules in accordance with Union law, to report incidents of a suspected serious criminal nature to the relevant law enforcement authorities. Where appropriate, and without prejudice to the personal data protection rules applying to Europol, it is desirable that coordination between the competent authorities and the law enforcement authorities of different Member States be facilitated by the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and ENISA.

Recital 139 Implementing acts on the Cooperation Group, measures and reporting

In order to ensure uniform conditions for the implementation of this Directive, implementing powers should be conferred on the Commission to lay down the procedural arrangements necessary for the functioning of the Cooperation Group and the technical and methodological as well as sectoral requirements concerning the cybersecurity risk-management measures, and to further specify the type of information, the format and the procedure of incident, cyber threat and near miss notifications and of significant cyber threat communications, as well as cases in which an incident is to be considered to be significant. Those powers should be exercised in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council(²³)Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 February 2011 laying down the rules and general principles concerning mechanisms for control by the Member States of the Commission’s exercise of implementing powers (OJ L 55, 28.2.2011, p. 13)..

Table of contents

Springlex and this text is meant purely as a documentation tool and has no legal effect. No liability is assumed for its content. The authentic version of this act is the one published in the Official Journal of the European Union.