NESA Compliance
Secure by design — mapped controls, evidence-ready artifacts, and operational playbooks aligned to UAE standards.
Core NESA Controls
Four pillars of compliance — governance, identity, data protection, and resilience
Governance & Policy
Executive ownership, DPO, signed policies.
Evidence:
- Signed policies
- Org chart
- Risk register
Identity & Cloud
RBAC, MFA, privileged audit, cloud hardening.
Evidence:
- IAM reports
- Access logs
- CSP checklist
Data Protection
Classification, AES-256, KMS, retention controls.
Evidence:
- Key rotation logs
- Data map
- Retention rules
Detection & Response
SIEM, runbook, DR tests, tabletop exercises.
Evidence:
- Incident timeline
- RTO/RPO results
Evidence & Runbook
Audit Evidence
Inventory
Asset register (hardware, SW, cloud)
Config
Hardened baseline (CIS/CSP)
Logs
90 days immutable logs
Training
Annual security & PDPL records
Incident Flow
Detect
<5m
Triage
<30m
Mitigate
<4h
Notify DPO
<72h
Restore
RTO
Post-mortem
+7d
Detect → Triage → Mitigate → Notify DPO → Restore → Post-mortem
Audit Sprint
Baseline Audit
72 hours
Fix Backlog
2 weeks
Evidence Pack
1 week
Readiness: Gap < 10% = Audit Ready ✓
Implementation Checklist
Engineer-ready sprint tasks — copy into your board
Baseline & Asset Inventory
- Produce CMDB (cloud + on-prem)
- Include owner, classification
- Deliverable: assets_inventory.csv
Policy & Governance
- Publish Security Policy, AUP, IR, DPA
- Assign DPO & escalation contacts
- Deliverable: signed policies folder
Identity & Access
- Enforce MFA for all admin accounts
- Implement RBAC groups in cloud & SSO
- Deliverable: IAM report
Cloud Hardening
- Apply CIS/CSP benchmarks
- Enable logging & object-level ACLs
- Block public storage by default
Data Protection & KMS
- Classify data, set retention
- Integrate KMS, rotate keys
- Apply encryption at rest/in transit
Logging & SIEM
- Centralize logs, set immutable retention
- Configure SIEM rules
- Deliverable: SIEM rule pack
Incident Response
- Create Incident runbook
- Run Sev1 tabletop exercise
- Document post-mortem template
DR & Backups
- Backup verification
- RTO/RPO tests
- Deliverable: restore proof
Acceptance Tests
Asset inventory completeness
Production hosts & cloud services in CMDB
MFA coverage
All admin accounts enforced
Encryption verification
All storage buckets & DBs show TLS + encryption at rest
Log retention
Logs immutable and queryable
Incident drill TTFD
Time to first decision on Sev1 tabletop
DR test passed
Restore critical DB from snapshot within defined RTO
"Certified readiness is reproducible — our blueprint: policy → controls → evidence → drills."
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