CER Directive
What is the CER Directive?
The EU Directive on the Resilience of Critical Entities (Directive (EU) 2022/2557 — CER Directive) is designed to ensure that vital services remain operational, even in the face of serious disruptions.
Its goal is to strengthen the ability of critical entities to prevent, withstand, and recover from physical incidents, safeguarding essential societal functions and the communities that depend on them.
Is Your Organisation a Critical Entity?
Under the CER Directive, an organisation is considered a critical entity if it:
Provides one or more essential services
Operates, with its critical infrastructure located within an EU Member State
Could suffer significant service disruption if impacted by an incident
Critical entities may be public or private and must fall within one of the key sectors outlined in the Directive’s Annex:
Energy
Transport
Health
Banking
Digital infrastructure
Space
Waste water
Drinking water
Public administration
Large-scale food production, processing, and distribution
Financial market infrastructure
How Does This Differ from Traditional Risk Management?
The CER Directive marks a shift from siloed risk management to an integrated, multi-hazard approach.
It requires critical entities to:
Conduct both probabilistic and non-probabilistic risk assessments, covering frequent and rare high impact threats
Understand compounding and cascading risks
Identify vulnerabilities across upstream dependencies (e.g., cloud hosting, power supply, pharmaceuticals), downstream reliance (e.g., logistics), and lateral interconnections (shared systems/assets) that could trigger cascading failures
How Prosilience Consulting Can Help You Meet CER Directive Requirements
At Prosilience Consulting, we specialise in helping organisations navigate uncertainty and build crisis ready teams. We can support your CER Directive compliance and resilience goals by:
1. Strengthening Incident & Crisis Management Capability
Reviewing, refreshing, or creating incident and crisis management plans
Developing clear crisis communication strategies for effective stakeholder engagement during disruptions (Article 13 and 15)
2. Designing and Delivering Realistic Training & Exercises
Building a tailored programme of exercises based on your risk assessment scenarios
Conducting post-exercise reviews to evaluate response effectiveness
Identifying opportunities to enhance resilience maturity and operational readiness (Article 13)