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Summary – Ahead of the Cyber Resilience Act 2027, Swiss manufacturers of connected products must integrate cybersecurity by design, ensure component robustness through threat modeling and measurable requirements, automate CI/CD pipelines with SBOMs and vulnerability scans, and maintain reactive monitoring and patch management in production.
Solution: conduct a maturity audit, establish security governance, and deploy a pragmatic roadmap aligned with CRA 2027, with quick wins to turn compliance into a competitive advantage.
The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) will come into full effect in 2027, redefining security requirements for all connected products. Beyond mere regulatory compliance, it mandates a systematic approach: cybersecurity and resilience must be built in from design, strengthened throughout development, and maintained during operation.
In this context, every Swiss organization designing or operating IoT devices, cloud solutions, or embedded systems must assess its maturity and close any gaps before the deadline. This article outlines the key steps to turn these new obligations into a lasting competitive advantage.
Security by design: embedding resilience from the start
The design phase lays the foundation for cyber resilience and determines the product’s future robustness. Incorporating threat modeling and defining precise requirements significantly reduces vulnerabilities upstream.
Implementing threat modeling
Threat modeling involves mapping potential attack scenarios and analyzing architectural weaknesses during the specification phase. This approach anticipates exploitation techniques such as injections, traffic hijacking, or device compromises.
Each feature is assessed from a risk perspective, with an inventory of critical assets and threat vectors. Design teams thus gain a clear view of the areas that require priority protection.
Cross-functional workshops—bringing together architects, developers, and security officers—ensure a comprehensive understanding of both functional needs and technical risks.
Defining precise security requirements
Security requirements must be expressed in measurable, verifiable terms. For example, mandating AES-256 encryption for sensitive communications or specifying a maximum patch deployment time after vulnerability discovery.
Each requirement becomes an acceptance criterion during design reviews and integration tests. This ensures traceability of controls and prevents ambiguous interpretations.
The “security by design” approach relies on recognized standards (OWASP, NIST) to align the design with proven best practices.
Contextual validation example
A Swiss medical device company integrated threat modeling tailored to its patient and administrative data flows during the design phase. Every potential intrusion scenario was charted in a matrix and then prioritized by health impact.
This example shows that formalizing these requirements reduced late-stage fixes by 40%. Decision traceability also streamlined regulatory audit preparation.
It illustrates the direct impact of secure design on project performance and regulatory compliance.
Automation and continuous verification during development
Integrating automation and traceability tools ensures consistent code quality and proactive vulnerability detection. CI/CD pipelines paired with SBOMs provide full transparency over used components.
SBOM and component traceability
The Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) catalogs every library and module in the application. It ties each component to its lifecycle and security posture.
Teams automatically track third-party dependencies and verify their licenses. This enables rapid updates when a vulnerability is discovered in an external component.
Continuous SBOM generation in the build pipeline prevents omissions and increases visibility across the software stack.
CI/CD integration and vulnerability scans
CI/CD pipelines automatically trigger security scans on each commit. Open-source or commercial tools identify known flaws and raise real-time alerts.
Build failures block deployments if critical vulnerabilities are detected, ensuring only compliant artifacts advance to production.
Implementing tolerance thresholds (for example zero critical) strengthens process rigor and speeds up issue resolution.
Proactive dependency management
Rather than postponing updates, a continuous maintenance strategy applies security patches on a planned schedule. Automated tests validate the absence of regressions.
Separating critical components into microservices enables partial updates without impacting the entire system.
Using open-source libraries backed by strong communities accelerates response times to emerging vulnerabilities.
Robust CI/CD pipeline example
A Swiss industrial SME deployed a CI/CD pipeline integrating SBOM, SAST and DAST scans, followed by functional non-regression tests. Each build on a preproduction environment ran a time-budgeted test suite.
This case demonstrates that extensive automation reduced manual interventions by 60% and accelerated deployments while maintaining high security levels.
It highlights the balance between agility and rigor essential for CRA 2027 compliance.
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Operations and maintenance: ensuring resilience in production
In production, proactive anomaly detection and responsive patch management are essential to maintain service continuity. Regular penetration tests complete this resilience strategy.
Proactive monitoring and anomaly detection
Monitoring solutions continuously collect critical metrics (CPU, memory, network traffic) and application logs. They trigger alerts on abnormal behaviors.
Event correlation and pattern analysis facilitate detection of targeted attacks or data leaks.
Custom dashboards enable operations teams to respond swiftly and minimize incident impact.
Responsive patch management
A formal patch management process includes risk assessment, automated update deployment, and post-deployment validation.
A dedicated communication channel ensures rapid reporting of critical vulnerabilities from vendors or the security community.
Staging environments mirroring production guarantee that patches introduce no regressions.
Penetration tests and regular audits
Periodic pentests by third-party experts simulate real-world attacks and uncover flaws undetected by automated tools.
Detailed audit reports list discovered vulnerabilities and offer clear, prioritized recommendations based on business impact.
Incorporating these reports into an action plan ensures effective tracking and closure of issues.
Proactive cyber maintenance example
A Swiss home automation startup deployed a monitoring system combined with quarterly intrusion tests. Detected anomalies were resolved before exploitation in real scenarios.
This case demonstrates that investing in continuous monitoring significantly reduces the risk of serious compromise and average incident resolution time.
It underscores the importance of a proactive posture to maintain user trust and service availability.
Assessing maturity and planning CRA 2027 compliance
A maturity audit measures gaps against CRA requirements and defines a pragmatic action plan. Internal governance and a clear roadmap are key to achieving compliance on time.
Maturity audit and gap analysis
A formal assessment catalogs existing processes, security practices, and controls. Each domain is scored using predefined criteria (design, development, deployment, operation).
Comparing this baseline with the CRA framework highlights weaknesses and ranks actions by business priority and risk.
This diagnosis provides a clear view of the human and technological investments needed to close gaps.
Governance and internal awareness
Establishing a steering committee with CIOs, business leaders, and cybersecurity experts ensures strategic alignment of initiatives.
Targeted training and awareness workshops reinforce a security culture within development and operations teams.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) feed regular reporting, enabling progress tracking and priority adjustments.
Adopting a compliance roadmap
Planning includes interim milestones for each key phase: secure design, automation, monitoring, audits. Our roadmap helps structure these steps.
Quick wins are identified to deliver fast benefits (updating critical dependencies, deploying a minimal SBOM).
Timelines align with the CRA 2027 deadline, considering development cycles and available resources.
Turning cyber resilience into a competitive advantage
The Cyber Resilience Act 2027 sets a new standard for connected products: security must be embedded at design, continuously validated during development, and proactively maintained in operation. Maturity assessment and internal governance ensure on-time compliance.
By adopting these best practices—security by design, secure CI/CD pipelines, advanced monitoring, and a structured action plan—Swiss companies can transform a regulatory constraint into a genuine lever for trust and differentiation.
