ENISA's New Guidance Confirms the Disclosure Delay Is for Vulnerabilities Only, and That the CSIRT Decides

ENISA's New Guidance Confirms the Disclosure Delay Is for Vulnerabilities Only, and That the CSIRT Decides

Two days before reporting starts, ENISA published a fifth guidance page for the Cyber Resilience Act's tArdán Tuairiscithe Aonair. It covers Particularly Exceptional Circumstances, the mechanism most often described as the manufacturer's ability to hold back a vulnerability report, and it is the first document to show the screen and state the limits. Two of those limits change how the mechanism should be described.

It applies to vulnerabilities, and not to incidents

ENISA states it without qualification: PEC is only applicable when a manufacturer or open-source software steward submits a 72-hour notification of an actively exploited vulnerability. Níl a leithéid ann i gcás teagmhais thromchúisigh, and no PEC control appears on an incident notification.

The clue was already in the field table. When ENISA published version 1.1 of its Gluais SRP on 5 Meán Fómhair 2026, the PEC fields sat under the actively exploited vulnerability heading and had no counterpart in the severe incident block. What was implicit in a table is now explicit in a sentence, and it matters because the two duties are frequently described together. If your incident runbook assumes you can restrict what ENISA sees about a severe incident the way you can for a vulnerability, that assumption is wrong.

The logic holds on reading Airteagal 16(2), whose three conditions are all written about a notified leochaileachta. The platform is following the text.

Invoking PEC is a request, not a switch

Mechanically it is simple. In the 72-hour template you scroll to the foot of the form and toggle the PEC indicator, which reveals the three delay reasons as checkboxes and an optional free-text field. The record then moves to the state 72h Submitted under PEC.

The free-text field is where the guidance is more interesting than it first appears. ENISA describes it as information that can help the CSIRT ainmnithe mar chomhordaitheoir decide whether to accept the submission under PEC. So the toggle does not apply a restriction; it asks for one. The coordinator remains responsible for deciding whether dissemination is necessary and possible, and for passing the full notification to ENISA and to other concerned CSIRTs manually.

That reframes the drafting task. An optional box a busy reporter might leave empty at three in the morning is the argument on which the request turns. Write it for someone weighing it against the case for warning other Member States quickly, and name the specific harm.

What it does not do

It does not touch your deadlines. The 24-hour, 72 uair an chloig and final-report windows run from awareness and nothing pauses them, PEC included. What PEC affects is how much of the content reaches ENISA, and when: where it is invoked, ENISA receives only the limited information Article 16(2) allows until the coordinator releases the full notification.

It is also distinct from the delay the receiving CSIRT may apply on its own initiative under Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/881, a glacadh ar an 11 Nollaig 2025. That is the coordinator's decision about onward dissemination to other Member States. PEC is your flag on the content of one notification. The two are often merged in summaries, and they are different things with different decision-makers. Our treoir tuairiscithe sets out both.

A note on ENISA's dates

One practical warning for anyone maintaining an internal procedure. Between 7 agus 9 Meán Fómhair 2026 ENISA also rewrote the AR Notification submission and update guidance while leaving its stamp reading 3/08/2026. The changes are not cosmetic: the terminology moves to CDaC throughout, references to a national endpoint data layer disappear, submission confirmations now go to gach assigned representative of the manufacturer rather than only the person who filed, and the early warning is now expressly said to reach other concerned CSIRTs only after de láimh dissemination.

We have previously suggested recording the "last updated" stamp beside anything you copy into a runbook. That advice now needs a caveat: the stamp is not a reliable version marker. Keep your own dated copy of the text instead.

What to do with this

• Decide, before you need it, who is authorised to invoke PEC and on what basis. It is a legal judgement about one of three narrow conditions, not an incident-response reflex.
• Draft the justification wording now, in the same document as your 24-hour skeleton, since the platform's own field is optional and easy to skip.
• Remove any assumption that PEC is available for severe incidents. It is not.
• Keep filing on time regardless. Nothing here moves a deadline, and our state of play page tracks what is still outstanding.