How Fragmented Compliance Strategies Put European Businesses at Risk
Fragmentation Is Undermining Compliance Across Europe
European regulations are raising the bar – but most organisations are still trying to meet them with outdated, fragmented tools.
From GDPR to NIS-2 and now DORA, the compliance burden for European businesses is intensifying. Legal, IT, and security teams are expected to track how sensitive data moves, who accesses it, and whether it’s protected – across internal systems, cloud environments, and external partners.
But the reality in many organisations paints a different picture. Sensitive data is scattered across multiple platforms: file sharing tools, email gateways, cloud drives, collaboration suites, legacy MFT systems, and unmanaged third-party services. Often, these systems are stitched together with manual workarounds and temporary integrations – if they’re integrated at all.
The result is a growing visibility gap and most companies cannot answer basic compliance questions like:
- Where exactly is our sensitive data stored or processed?
- Who accessed it – and when?
- Was it encrypted? Was the access logged?
- Can we prove it to an auditor?
When every communication channel operates in isolation, the risk isn’t just inefficiency – it’s non-compliance.
What many teams see as a technical limitation is, in fact, a structural threat to auditability, resilience, and trust.
The Real Cost of Fragmentation: A Compliance Breakdown in Slow Motion
Most Enterprises Use Too Many Tools – And It’s Costing Them Compliance
Most enterprises today use a patchwork of tools – six, ten, sometimes even more – just to handle file sharing, secure communications, data transfers, and access controls.
This fragmentation isn’t just inefficient. It’s dangerous.
There’s no central audit trail.
No consistent policy enforcement.
And no reliable way to see what’s happening in real time – especially when third parties are involved.
The result? Security blind spots, inconsistent compliance workflows, and escalating costs. All at a time when European regulators are asking sharper questions and expecting cleaner answers.
Disconnected Platforms, Disconnected Responsibilities
According to industry research, the average organisation uses more than 6 different platforms to manage sensitive data. Each tool comes with its own settings, its own access controls, and its own logging formats – if logging exists at all.
- No single source of truth
- Policy inconsistencies across communication channels
- Blind spots in encryption, authentication, and access control
- Unmonitored third-party exchanges
- Delayed or incomplete breach reporting
Even with the best intentions, compliance teams are left chasing fragments – copying logs between systems, cross-referencing spreadsheets, and relying on screenshots to prove that policies were followed.
Compliance Gaps Don’t Stay Hidden for Long
This isn’t just a theoretical risk. The data speaks for itself:
- 35.5% of data breaches in 2024 were caused by third-party access
- 46.75% of ransomware attacks exploited common IT tools – especially unmanaged file transfer platforms
- The average cost of a breach rose to $4.88 million last year
- And 61% of organisations cited a lack of visibility into third-party interactions as a key risk driver
The costs aren’t just financial. Reputational damage, legal exposure, and regulatory penalties all stem from one root cause: insufficient control and oversight of sensitive data.
Why Traditional Compliance Strategies No Longer Work
Manual Compliance Was Never Meant for This Level of Complexity
The regulatory environment in Europe has evolved – but many organisations are still managing compliance like it’s 2015.
- Manually reviewing user access across separate platforms
- Exporting logs from different systems for audits
- Creating breach reports after the fact, from fragmented data
- Trusting that each team or department is applying the same policies – even when using different tools
These workflows are slow, reactive, and prone to error. And they simply don’t scale when regulations like NIS-2, DORA, and GDPR demand real-time response, provable oversight, and coordinated third-party governance.
What NIS-2 and DORA Expect – and Why Fragmentation Fails
Fragmented compliance strategies inevitably create gaps in enforcement. Even when security policies exist, they’re often:
- Configured differently across platforms
- Applied inconsistently by different teams
- Impossible to monitor from a central place
The result? A false sense of control – and a growing number of security exceptions, access loopholes, and ungoverned data flows.
From a regulatory standpoint, this is untenable. Under DORA, financial institutions must report incidents promptly and accurately and demonstrate full visibility into ICT risk.
Under NIS-2, essential and important entities must prove that controls are in place and effective – including for third-party systems and external providers.
That’s not something you can piece together at the last minute.
Shadow IT Makes It Worse
When sanctioned tools become too slow, too clunky, or too limited, employees look elsewhere. That’s how you end up with sensitive data moving through:
- Unapproved cloud services
- Personal email accounts
- Consumer-grade file sharing apps
Not because users want to break the rules – but because the tools they’ve been given don’t support how they actually work.
The outcome? Data leaves the organisation without a trace. And when an audit or breach investigation comes, there’s no way to prove what happened – or even that it happened at all.
The Case for a Unified Platform for Secure Data Exchange in Europe
From Patchwork to Platform: Rethinking Compliance Architecture
A unified compliance platform doesn’t just simplify operations – it transforms how organisations govern their most sensitive data.
Instead of juggling disconnected tools for email encryption, file sharing, audit logging, secure web forms, and third-party collaboration, a unified platform brings everything under one framework: one set of policies, one source of truth, one place to enforce, track, and prove compliance.
This approach is especially critical in the European regulatory context, where data governance must be continuous, auditable, and provable – not just internally, but across external ecosystems of vendors, customers, and partners.
What Unified Data Governance in Europe Should Look Like
A modern compliance architecture requires more than a secure perimeter. It demands secure data governance embedded into every data exchange. That includes:
- End-to-end encryption: protecting data in transit and at rest, across all channels
- Granular access controls: based on user roles, data sensitivity, and context
- Immutable audit logs: that capture every access, change, and transfer
- Zero Trust principles: applied at the data layer, not just the network
- Unified policy enforcement: across email, file sharing, APIs, and forms
This isn’t just an IT ideal. It’s what frameworks like GDPR, NIS-2, and DORA now implicitly or explicitly require.
And it’s where fragmented tools fall short.
For organisations with strict data sovereignty needs, a sovereign access architecture ensures that sensitive data never leaves controlled jurisdictions.
Because governance is only as strong as its weakest channel.
How Kiteworks Solves the Compliance Puzzle with One Unified Platform
Meeting the demands of European compliance frameworks requires more than isolated improvements. It calls for a structural shift – from tool-based thinking to platform-based governance.
Kiteworks addresses this need with its Private Data Network (PDN): a platform that consolidates sensitive content exchanges into one secure, governed environment. Instead of relying on disconnected tools and manual reporting, you and your team use a single platform to apply, monitor, and prove compliance policies – across email, secure file transfers, APIs, web forms, and more.
What makes this relevant for compliance?
- Consistent policies and controls across all communication channels
- Role- and attribute-based access management with least-privilege enforcement
- Automatic end-to-end encryption, both inbound and outbound
- Immutable audit logs for complete traceability and incident response
- Visibility into third-party data flows to meet NIS-2 and DORA requirements
- Zero Trust at the Data Layer: No assumptions, no shortcuts – every access is verified, every action logged
In short, Kiteworks doesn’t just protect systems – it governs how data moves, who interacts with it, and whether every step is traceable and provably compliant.
Conclusion: Fragmented Tools, Fragmented Responsibility
Europe’s regulatory environment is only becoming more demanding. NIS-2, DORA, and GDPR don’t just ask whether your data is encrypted – they ask whether you can prove it. Across every channel. In real time. With third parties included.
That level of compliance isn’t compatible with tool sprawl.
When sensitive data moves through disconnected systems, visibility fades. Control weakens. Audits become guesswork. And responsibility gets scattered across departments, platforms, and providers.
A unified platform changes that.
It replaces fragmentation with clarity. It consolidates policies, controls, and reporting into one governed environment – making compliance measurable, auditable, and sustainable.
In today’s landscape, unified data governance in Europe isn’t just a technical upgrade. It’s a strategic necessity.
Next Step: Compliant and Secure Data Exchange in Action
If you’re struggling with overlapping compliance requirements and limited visibility into how sensitive data moves across your organisation, you’re not alone.
Let us show you how a unified platform can simplify governance and strengthen your compliance posture – without adding complexity.
Request a demo and see how Kiteworks helps organisations like yours simplify audits and eliminate compliance blind spots.
FAQs
Using multiple disconnected tools to manage sensitive data creates visibility gaps, inconsistent policy enforcement, and fragmented audit logs. This makes it difficult to prove compliance, respond to incidents, and meet regulatory requirements under frameworks like GDPR, NIS-2, and DORA.
European regulations demand traceability, auditability, and unified control over how sensitive data is exchanged – internally and with third parties. Fragmented systems lead to policy silos, manual reporting, and compliance blind spots that regulators increasingly reject.
Tool sprawl often results in incomplete or inconsistent audit trails, making it hard to trace user activity or prove encryption and access controls. This delays incident response and increases the risk of regulatory penalties for insufficient reporting or documentation.
While each regulation has a different scope, they all require unified control over sensitive data: encryption, access control, logging, breach reporting, and oversight of third-party data flows. None of these requirements can be met reliably with fragmented tools.
A unified platform brings all sensitive data exchanges under one governance framework. This enables consistent policy enforcement, end-to-end encryption, real-time monitoring, and audit-ready logging – making it easier to comply with GDPR, NIS-2, and DORA.
The Kiteworks Private Data Network is a unified platform that consolidates email, file sharing, forms, APIs, and third-party collaboration into one secure environment. It provides end-to-end encryption, granular access control, and immutable audit logs – helping organisations meet European compliance standards with full visibility and control.