Insights

Brussels – April 21, 2026: Lauren Cuyvers has joined Crowell & Moring as a partner in its highly regarded Privacy and Cybersecurity Group, expanding the firm’s ability to provide critical legal counsel to clients managing a complex and rapidly changing privacy and cybersecurity landscape globally. She is the third addition to the firm’s Brussels office in the last six months and the fourth partner to join the firm’s Privacy and Cybersecurity Group in the last year.

Until recently, Belgian law did not have a general regulatory framework for internal investigations. Companies wishing to conduct an investigation had to navigate a fragmented set of rules that covered general principles and, to a limited extent, privacy and employee rights. The application of these rules to internal investigations was not clear, and it was therefore often difficult to put the rules into practice. This legal vacuum created significant risks, both for the integrity of the investigation itself and for the admissibility of any evidence gathered. 

The wait is over. As of today, manufacturers of connected products (both hardware and software) must comply with the Cyber Resilience Act’s (“CRA”) vulnerability and incident reporting obligations. The CRA’s Single Reporting Platform (“SRP”), operated by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (“ENISA”), is now the EU-wide gateway through which those notifications must flow.

The EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) is an EU product cybersecurity law for connected products (formally, “products with digital elements” under the CRA) commercialized in the EU; it entered into force on 10 December 2024, with direct application across the EU. Full application begins 11 December 2027, but one of its most operationally demanding provisions takes effect in just under 100 days, on 11 September 2026: the mandatory vulnerability and incident reporting under Article 14 CRA.