NIS 2 and US Companies: The Silent Cybersecurity Mandate You Can’t Afford to Ignore

Key Points (a.k.a. the “Don’t-Say-We-Didn’t-Warn-You” List) 

• Act Now: NIS 2 is live. EU states had to bake it into law by October 17, 2024. No grace period. 

• Massive Fines: Up to €10M or 2% of global turnover. Yes, global. Yes, painful. 

• Executive Liability: Leaders can be personally fined or even banned from management roles.. 

• Bigger Net: Not just power grids and banks anymore. Manufacturing, food, and even digital providers are now in the mix. 

• Supply Chain Domino: If your EU clients must comply, guess who else just inherited their problem? That’s right—you. 

📢 Alarm bells ringing? Drop us a line at info@revealrisk.com. We’ll help you hit snooze before regulators come knocking. 

The Transatlantic Ripple Effect 

For a lot of US companies, “compliance” has felt like a domestic hobby—ISO here, NIST there, maybe some SOX sprinkled in for good measure. 

But along comes NIS 2, the EU’s sequel to its original cyber law, and suddenly your “domestic-only” mindset is about as useful as a floppy disk in a cloud migration project. 

Think of it as GDPR’s cousin—less about data privacy, more about resilience. And like a pushy relative at Thanksgiving, it doesn’t care that you live across the ocean. 

Two Ways NIS 2 Puts You on the Hook 

1. Direct “Extraterritorial” Reach

Got an office, subsidiary, or server in the EU? You’re automatically in scope. 

• Essential Entities: energy, banking, healthcare, transport, digital infrastructure. 

• Important Entities: chemicals, food production, waste management, online marketplaces, and more. 

👉 If your company touches Europe, NIS 2 compliance isn’t optional. It’s survival. 

2. Supply Chain Scrutiny

Don’t have an EU office? Don’t celebrate yet. 

NIS 2 also deputizes your EU clients, forcing them to police their vendors. That means if you’re on their roster, you either prove you’ve got your cybersecurity act together—or you risk losing the business. 

In other words, NIS 2 just became the world’s strictest referral program. 

What NIS 2 Wants From You (Spoiler: It’s a Lot) 

1. Risk Management & Governance 

• • Regular risk assessments (no, the one from 2021 doesn’t count). 

• • Real controls: access, encryption, asset management, policies. 

• • Executives must sign off—liability included. 

1. Incident Reporting on Espresso 

• • 24 hours: Early warning shot. 

• • 72 hours: More details, initial damage report. 

• • 1 month: Full post-mortem. 

This isn’t “we’ll get around to it.” It’s more like, “hope you had your IR plan rehearsed yesterday.” 

The Fallout for Getting It Wrong 

Sure, the fines are scary (€10M or 2% of turnover for “essential” entities and €7M or 1.4% for “important”), but the real nightmare is losing EU contracts or watching regulators sideline your leadership team. 

Cyberattacks already disrupt operations. Add NIS 2 violations, and suddenly you’re explaining to the board why you lost a billion-dollar client… and your CEO. 

How to Stay Out of the NIS 2 Penalty Box 

• Scope It: Figure out if you’re “essential” or “important.”(Hint: both come with obligations.) 

• Gap It: Assess your current cybersecurity against NIS 2’s checklist. 

• Fix It: Close the gaps—tech, policies, training, leadership buy-in. 

• Own It: Make sure the C-suite knows their names are on the line. 

Final Thought: Burden or Opportunity? 

You can treat NIS 2 as another compliance headache or tax (your preference, really) - or as a chance to sharpen your cybersecurity, lock down your EU revenue, and keep regulators at bay. 

You can treat NIS 2 like red tape, or you can use it as rocket fuel to secure your business and keep regulators and your competition in the rearview mirror. 

Because let’s be clear: “good enough” security is no longer good enough. 

📢 Want to know if NIS2 has your name on it? Get in touch. We’ll map out your risks and keep you in the EU business game.