Building trust by design: How the CRA will redefine product innovation

Did you realize that the Wi-Fi connection of your car, central heating, air conditioning, garage port, online printer, home battery, or television are entry ports for cybercriminals? And yes, it has many advantages to control or steer your home appliances and home infrastructure remotely, but as we have seen in the past years, every connected device could be turned into an instrument that works against you. Will the world reverse direction and become disconnected again? No, but the world has to step up cybersecurity. As of 2026, the European Union requires mandatory steps from businesses to increase cyber resilience. With the European Union’s new CRA law having taken effect in December 2024, the deadlines have settled. Companies must ensure retroactive reporting is in place by the summer of 2026, and by the summer of 2027, they must fully implement the law for new products. Pro-active action is vital to avoid compliance issues!

The European Union’s new Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is setting a bold expectation: cybersecurity is no longer optional, nor an afterthought. It must be baked into every product from the start. For innovators, engineers, and leaders across industries, this is a turning point: embed cybersecurity into the DNA of your products, and you’ll enter a new era of accountability.

The growing urgency: Why cybersecurity can’t be an afterthought anymore

Cyberattacks are no longer rare events. They’re everyday realities. Fueled by massive digital expansion, more sophisticated threats, enormous financial incentives, and widespread gaps in cyber hygiene and awareness, hacking is growing at an unprecedented pace. In 2024 alone, global cybercrime damages are projected to reach over $1 trillion annually — a staggering figure. Beyond the numbers, the stakes are human: breached medical devices, hijacked smart homes, and sabotaged industrial robots. Consumers and businesses alike are waking up. They demand not just performance and price, but trust. Today, products are getting smarter, more autonomous, and more connected than ever before, integrating sensing technologies, robotics, real-time data flows, and seamless connectivity. But this intelligence comes with greater complexity, and every new line of code, every new sensor, every connection becomes a new potential target. Cybersecurity isn’t just an add-on for these next-generation products. It’s a fundamental promise that must evolve hand-in-hand with innovation, embedded deeply into the hidden code, the firmware, and the systems driving the future.

CRA at a glance: What innovators need to know

At its heart, the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is Europe’s bold move to create cybersecurity requirements for all products with digital elements, meaning any product that contains or is software. The regulation demands that cybersecurity be considered from planning, design, and development all the way through production, delivery, maintenance, and beyond. Manufacturers must actively manage vulnerabilities, report incidents, provide clear instructions to users, and ensure security updates are available for as long as the product is expected to be in use.

The ultimate goal? Harmonized, essential cybersecurity rules that apply across the entire value chain, setting a duty of care for the full lifecycle of every connected product. The CRA calls for one thing: security by design. Key requirements include:

• Designing products with security principles integrated from the first line of code.
• Regular testing and monitoring for vulnerabilities throughout the entire product lifecycle.
• Fast, transparent patching of discovered vulnerabilities.
• Clear documentation of cybersecurity measures for authorities and users alike.
• Accountability across the supply chain, ensuring third-party components and services meet the same security standards.

For developers of embedded systems, from industrial controllers to IoT devices, this regulation cuts deep into the heart of design. Systems must be robust, not just at launch but through years of use in an unpredictable, evolving threat landscape. Here’s the bigger picture: The CRA is more than a checklist. It’s an invitation to reinvent how we innovate, embedding trust, resilience, and responsibility as core elements of product excellence.

CRA-compliance as a competitive edge: Turning challenges into advantages

Early compliance with the CRA offers powerful advantages for innovators willing to lead. First, it builds brand trust, security earns customer loyalty, and strengthens reputations that endure over time. Second, it opens the doors to market access, enabling products that meet CRA standards to move more easily and quickly across borders. Third, it drives cost efficiency, since addressing vulnerabilities during the design phase is dramatically cheaper, up to 100 times, than fixing them after launch. And finally, it fuels an innovation boost: new secure-by-design frameworks and smarter security models unlock faster development cycles and better, safer user experiences.

Across industries, from ambitious start-ups to established industrial giants, early movers have a unique opportunity, not just to meet cybersecurity expectations, but to shape the standard for the next generation of trusted, resilient products.

The path forward: How to strengthen your product strategy

The journey toward true cyber resilience begins with action:

• Assess and audit: Map your product’s vulnerabilities today, before hackers do it tomorrow.
• Design securely from the start: Integrate threat modeling and secure coding into your embedded systems development.
• Monitor continuously: Cyber risks evolve, so must your surveillance and patching strategies.
• Collaborate fearlessly: Build cross-functional teams where cybersecurity is part of engineering, not a separate afterthought.
• Learn, iterate, improve: Make resilience a permanent layer of your innovation DNA.

Taking cybersecurity seriously is not just about protecting users; it’s also about protecting your business. Non-compliance under the CRA can lead to significant financial penalties, putting reputations, market access, and growth at serious risk. Innovation isn’t just about solving today’s problems.  It’s about anticipating tomorrow’s challenges and being ready.

Resilience is the new innovation

In a world that runs on code and connection, the products that thrive will not be the flashiest or the fastest, but the most trusted. The Cyber Resilience Act challenges us all, not just to comply, but to lead.

• To embed trust deep into our systems.
• To turn security into a competitive advantage.
• To build a future where users can be confident in every line of code, every signal, every device.

Mitigation strategies aren’t just technical exercises. They’re blueprints for bold, better, and braver products. And the journey doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start simple: build a secure minimum viable product (MVP) using off-the-shelf components where security has already been designed in. Learn how these components behave, monitor them closely, act on real-world feedback, and iterate.

Remember: cybersecurity isn’t something you add at launch; it must be woven into every phase of your product’s development life cycle, from the very first concept to long after the product is in users’ hands. Let’s build products that don’t just survive tomorrow’s threats—but shape tomorrow’s possibilities.