At a glance: NIS2 requires organisations to ensure security awareness functions in real work situations and does not remain merely theoretical knowledge — a focus on behavioural change rather than compliance documentation.
The European NIS2 Directive regulates not only technical protective measures but places greater emphasis on employee responsibility for everyday security decisions. Going forward, authorities will focus less on merely verifying training documentation and more on measuring its tangible impact on risk.
Many cyber security incidents do not result from technical failures but from everyday decisions made by employees under time pressure. A phishing attack can appear like a regular message, a suspicious request may seem to come from a manager — in these situations, actual behaviour, not training knowledge, makes the difference.
The NIS2 Directive takes this reality into account by formulating requirements for risk management, governance and incident handling that must be implementable in daily operations. Until now, many organisations focused on formal documentation: training participation was recorded, compliance requirements were considered fulfilled. Whether the knowledge conveyed actually led to safer decisions remained unmeasured. With NIS2, the effectiveness of such measures comes into sharper focus — not the mere existence of policies, but their practical functionality in critical situations counts.
Regulatory authorities are increasingly interested in whether security measures deliver measurable results. Organisations gain insights when they analyse how employees respond to simulated incidents, what uncertainties exist or how quickly potential risks are reported. Such information provides a significantly more realistic picture of the security posture than mere training participation rates.
In parallel, corporate culture is crucial to success. Employees make better security decisions when they can ask questions, receive support and mistakes are not automatically sanctioned. Open communication and clear reporting channels build trust and increase the likelihood that security incidents are detected early. This makes security part of everyday work practice — not an additional obligation.
Source: www.it-daily.net · Published 11 June 2026
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