(a)

bear the ultimate responsibility for managing the financial entity’s ICT risk;

(b)

put in place policies that aim to ensure the maintenance of high standards of availability, authenticity, integrity and confidentiality, of data;

(c)

set clear roles and responsibilities for all ICT-related functions and establish appropriate governance arrangements to ensure effective and timely communication, cooperation and coordination among those functions;

(d)

bear the overall responsibility for setting and approving the digital operational resilience strategy as referred to in Article 6(8), including the determination of the appropriate risk tolerance level of ICT risk of the financial entity, as referred to in Article 6(8), point (b);

(e)

approve, oversee and periodically review the implementation of the financial entity’s ICT business continuity policy and ICT response and recovery plans, referred to, respectively, in Article 11(1) and (3), which may be adopted as a dedicated specific policy forming an integral part of the financial entity’s overall business continuity policy and response and recovery plan;

(f)

approve and periodically review the financial entity’s ICT internal audit plans, ICT audits and material modifications to them;

(g)

allocate and periodically review the appropriate budget to fulfil the financial entity’s digital operational resilience needs in respect of all types of resources, including relevant ICT security awareness programmes and digital operational resilience training referred to in Article 13(6), and ICT skills for all staff;

(h)

approve and periodically review the financial entity’s policy on arrangements regarding the use of ICT services provided by ICT third-party service providers;

(i)

put in place, at corporate level, reporting channels enabling it to be duly informed of the following:

(a)

develop and document an information security policy defining rules to protect the availability, authenticity, integrity and confidentiality of data, information assets and ICT assets, including those of their customers, where applicable;

(b)

following a risk-based approach, establish a sound network and infrastructure management structure using appropriate techniques, methods and protocols that may include implementing automated mechanisms to isolate affected information assets in the event of cyber-attacks;

(c)

implement policies that limit the physical or logical access to information assets and ICT assets to what is required for legitimate and approved functions and activities only, and establish to that end a set of policies, procedures and controls that address access rights and ensure a sound administration thereof;

(d)

implement policies and protocols for strong authentication mechanisms, based on relevant standards and dedicated control systems, and protection measures of cryptographic keys whereby data is encrypted based on results of approved data classification and ICT risk assessment processes;

(e)

implement documented policies, procedures and controls for ICT change management, including changes to software, hardware, firmware components, systems or security parameters, that are based on a risk assessment approach and are an integral part of the financial entity’s overall change management process, in order to ensure that all changes to ICT systems are recorded, tested, assessed, approved, implemented and verified in a controlled manner;

(f)

have appropriate and comprehensive documented policies for patches and updates.