CRA FAQ

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is a new EU Regulation that aims to safeguard consumers and businesses who use software or hardware products that contain software. It creates mandatory cybersecurity requirements for manufacturers and retailers that extend through those products’ lifecycle and software supply chain, including all open source dependencies. It also helps consumers and business identify such products through the CE mark.

The final text of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) can be found on EUR-Lex (English HTML version).

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) entered into force on December 11, 2024. Reporting obligations of actively exploited vulnerabilities and severe incidents (Article 14) start to apply on September 11, 2026. All other obligations for software developers start to apply on December 11, 2027.

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    Drafting phase: 2024-01-01, 2024-11-20
    Publication in the Official Journal of the EU (November 20, 2024): milestone, 2024-11-20, 5m
    Entry into force (December 11, 2024): milestone, 2024-12-11, 5m
    Implementation phase: 2024-12-11, 3y
    Reporting obligations of vulnerabilities and incidents (September 11, 2026): milestone, 2026-09-11, 5m
    Notification of conformity of assessment bodies (June 11, 2026): milestone, 2027-06-11, 5m
    All other obligations (December 11, 2027): milestone, 2027-12-11, 5m
    Application phase: 2026-09-11, 2029-06-30

The following types of products are regulated by the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA):

• Hardware products that contain software (e.g. laptops, smart appliances, mobile phones, network equipment, CPUs, etc.)
• Software products (e.g. operating systems, word processing, games or mobile apps, software libraries, etc.)
• Remote data processing solutions for any of the above, as far as those solutions are necessary for a product to perform its functions (e.g. cloud-based services that allow control of a smart lock at a distance, remote database that backs-up user preferences, etc.)

The following are NOT regulated by the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA):

• Services
• Software as a service (SaaS) (already regulated by NIS 2 and/or DORA)
• Products that do not contain software
• Products already covered by other regulations or directives: civil aviation equipment (already covered by 2018/1139), marine equipment (already covered by 2014/90), medical devices (already covered by 2017/745 and 2017/746), and motor vehicles (already covered by 2019/2144)
• Products exclusively designed for national security or defence purposes
• Products specifically designed to process classified information

It is worth noting however, that the intent of the EU legislators is to harmonize the various regulations mentioned above with the CRA in the near future.

The CE mark is a distinctive symbol indicating that a product complies with the relevant EU product regulations. Under the CRA, only manufacturers are authorized to add the CE mark to a product. Open source software stewards and developers outside the scope of the CRA cannot do so.

Article 30 of the CRA outlines how manufactures need to add the CE mark to the their product.

For hardware, the CE mark must be placed directly on the product. If this is not possible, it must be placed on the packaging and in the EU declaration of conformity.

For software, the CE mark must appear either in the EU declaration of conformity or on a website accompanying the software product, provided it is easily accessible to consumers.

Failure to properly add the CE mark may result in financial penalties.

The CRA Expert Group is a consultative body set up by the European Commission to provide it with advice and expertise during the implementation of the CRA. It is composed of 60 members which include:

• individual experts appointed in their personal capacities,
• industry representatives,
• trade and business associations,
• NGOs,
• member state authorities (plus the Norwegian Communications Authority), and
• ENISA.

Open source is particularly well represented, as the following open source organizations are members:

• the Apache Software Foundation,
• the Eclipse Foundation,
• OpenSSF, and
• the Sovereign Tech Agency.

As described in Article 9, the CRA Expert Group is consulted by the European Commission as it:

• prepares Guidance as described in Article 26,
• prepares the technical descriptions of the important and critical product categories described in Article 7 and Article 8, and listed in Annex III and Annex IV respectively, and
• undertakes preparatory work for the evaluation and review of the CRA.

In practice, the CRA Expert Group meets in plenary sessions 2-3 times a year. It has multiple work strands on specific topics, including one on open source, which meet on an ad-hoc basis. The agenda and minutes of the plenary sessions are public and are available on the CRA Expert Group’s offical page. Draft regulation and guidance shared with the CRA Expert Group may not be shared publicly until it is officially published.

You can find an explainer on expert groups in general on the European Commission’s website.