NCA Compliance Services for Saudi Arabia

The National Cybersecurity Authority (NCA) is the Saudi government body that sets and enforces national cybersecurity policy. The NCA Cybersecurity Framework is the umbrella term for its mandatory controls: the Essential Cybersecurity Controls (ECC) baseline, the Cloud Cybersecurity Controls (CCC), the Critical Systems Cybersecurity Controls (CSCC) and the National Cryptographic Standards (NCS). Compliance is mandatory for all Saudi government entities, public-sector bodies, operators of critical infrastructure, and a growing list of regulated private-sector organisations. Adjacent to this sits the Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL), enforced by SDAIA, which applies to every organisation processing personal data of Saudi residents.

NCA ECC is organised into five main domains: Cybersecurity Governance, Cybersecurity Defence, Cybersecurity Resilience, Third-Party and Cloud Computing Cybersecurity, and Industrial Control Systems Cybersecurity. Each domain contains subdomains and individual controls. The ECC baseline applies to all NCA-regulated entities; CSCC and CCC add enhanced controls for critical systems and cloud workloads.

ECC (Essential Cybersecurity Controls) is the mandatory baseline that every regulated entity must implement. CCC (Cloud Cybersecurity Controls) applies on top of ECC to cloud service providers and tenant organisations running workloads on cloud, it splits requirements between provider responsibilities and tenant responsibilities. CSCC (Critical Systems Cybersecurity Controls) is an enhanced control set for organisations operating critical national systems, with higher control rigour, stricter monitoring, and tighter incident-response timelines.

Saudi banks, insurers, finance companies and SAMA-licensed payment service providers fall under both regimes. SAMA's Cybersecurity Framework imposes its own maturity-based controls and mandates annual penetration testing (CSF Req. 3.3.14). In practice, NCA ECC and SAMA CSF overlap heavily, but auditors expect controls to be evidenced against the specific framework that applies. SecurityWall maps evidence to both frameworks in the same engagement so financial institutions do not pay twice for overlapping work.

PDPL (Personal Data Protection Law) is Saudi Arabia's general data-protection law, enforced by SDAIA. It applies to every organisation processing personal data of Saudi residents, domestically or from abroad. Technical security measures under PDPL Article 19 align closely with NCA ECC controls, so a single engagement can produce evidence for both. PDPL also has distinct obligations, breach notification timing, cross-border transfer assessments, data-subject rights, lawful basis documentation, that an NCA engagement alone does not cover.

Our NCA gap assessment includes: (1) Scope confirmation against ECC, CCC, CSCC and PDPL as applicable; (2) Documentation review, policies, procedures, network diagrams, asset registers, third-party agreements; (3) Stakeholder interviews across IT, security, HR, legal, procurement and operations; (4) Technical sampling, configuration review, log review, control effectiveness testing; (5) Gap register mapping each unmet control to remediation effort and priority; (6) Roadmap with phasing, dependencies and budget guidance; (7) Audit-evidence templates for each control. Typical duration is 4–6 weeks depending on entity size.

Yes. NCA ECC subdomain 2-3-1 (Penetration Testing) requires regulated entities to conduct penetration testing of internet-facing systems, internal critical systems and applications, at least annually and after significant change. CSCC applies stricter cadence and scope expectations for critical systems. Tests must be conducted by qualified personnel and reports retained as audit evidence. SecurityWall delivers NCA-aligned penetration tests by OSCP and OSWE-certified testers with reporting mapped to the specific ECC/CSCC controls each finding affects.

Timeline varies with starting maturity. A typical journey is: Gap assessment (4–6 weeks), policy and governance uplift (4–8 weeks, can run in parallel), technical remediation (3–9 months depending on findings), penetration testing (2–4 weeks), audit-readiness review (2–3 weeks). Small to medium organisations starting from near-zero typically reach audit-ready in 6–9 months. Large enterprises and critical-systems operators should plan 9–18 months.

NCA can issue formal warnings, mandate corrective action plans with hard deadlines, impose financial penalties, and, for critical-systems operators, escalate to operational restrictions. Beyond regulator action, non-compliance commonly disqualifies entities from public-sector contracts, blocks data-residency approvals, and surfaces during due diligence on funding rounds, M&A and partnership agreements. PDPL violations are enforced separately by SDAIA with their own administrative-fine regime.

Every engagement is scoped against your applicable control sets (ECC, CCC, CSCC, NCS), entity size, system count and reporting requirements, then quoted as a fixed price in Saudi Riyal. Book a 30-minute consultation and we'll send a scoped proposal within 24 hours, with no obligation. All engagements are invoiced in SAR.