CRA Awareness: Cybersecurity Is Becoming a Product Requirement

The EU Cyber Resilience Act, known as the CRA, introduces cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements. It entered into force on 10 December 2024. Main obligations apply from 11 December 2027, while vulnerability reporting obligations apply earlier, from 11 September 2026. (Digital Strategy)

This is a major shift for manufacturers, software providers, importers, distributors, and organisations placing digital products on the EU market. Cybersecurity is no longer only an enterprise IT responsibility. It is becoming a product lifecycle obligation.

The CRA requires organisations to think about secure design, vulnerability management, security updates, documentation, conformity, incident reporting, and post-market monitoring. For software and connected products, this means security needs to be embedded from design through development, release, maintenance, and end-of-life.

Product teams should start preparing now. Waiting until the compliance deadlines approach will create unnecessary pressure, especially for organisations with complex product portfolios or legacy software.

A practical readiness approach includes product scoping, gap assessment, secure development lifecycle review, vulnerability disclosure processes, update mechanisms, technical documentation, supplier dependency reviews, and executive ownership.

The CRA also changes customer expectations. Buyers will increasingly ask whether digital products are secure by design, supported, patchable, and compliant.

Key message: The CRA makes cybersecurity part of product quality. Secure products will become a market expectation, not a differentiator.