Reliance Boundary Governance relying on reciprocal certification equivalence across EU and US regimes is mis-specified. Certification no longer transfers risk across jurisdictions. It transfers evidence.
Compliance Model Divergence
Certification no longer means the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic. In the EU, it is becoming a supervision substitute. In the US, it is the prosecutable surface.
The Commission's January 20 NIS2 amendments introduce certification-based compliance pathways. A qualifying European cybersecurity certificate creates presumption of conformity. National authorities cannot impose additional security audits. Certification compresses supervision.
The DOJ reported $52 million in FCA cybersecurity settlements for FY2025. Resolutions tripled year-over-year. A defense contractor self-assessed a SPRS score of 104. A third party assessed negative 142. Settlement: $4.6 million. A separate December 2025 criminal indictment targeted an individual for falsified certifications exceeding $29 million. Certification expands prosecutorial surface.
Same instrument. Opposite liability vectors. The compliance artifact that reduces oversight in one jurisdiction now encounters adversarial reinterpretation in another. That is not a monitoring problem. It is an artifact design problem.
Recorded Condition
February 3 to February 13, 2026. EU Commission advanced NIS2 amendments centralizing technical cybersecurity measures at EU level, blocking member state gold-plating where implementing acts exist. DOJ civil cyber-fraud enforcement reached small contractors. December 2025: criminal indictment of named individual. Congress extended CISA 2015 through September 30, 2026, without amendment. CRA vulnerability reporting obligations take effect September 11, 2026, retroactively covering all products with digital elements already on the market.
Observed Shift
Three categories of evidence CISOs have treated as interchangeable are diverging: evidence of compliance, evidence of truth, evidence defensible in court. An EU cybersecurity certificate satisfies the first. It says nothing about the second. It may actively undermine the third where the question is whether the certified state was accurate at the time of assertion.
NIS2 amendments require entities to disclose whether they received a ransom demand, whether they paid, the amount, the method, the recipient. The Commission states this "should not create extra obligations." The moment a ransomware disclosure filed under NIS2 is subpoenaed in a US FCA action, compliance artifacts become discovery assets.
This is not a coordination problem. It is a structural incompatibility.
Constraint Interaction
CISA 2015's third extension without amendment confirms the statute operates as a continuing resolution artifact. The September 30, 2026 sunset falls inside the same fiscal year boundary that produced the previous two lapses. The definitions remain unmodified since 2015. The threat landscape they describe does not.
CRA vulnerability reporting takes effect September 11, 2026. Obligations apply to all products already on the EU market, including those shipped years before the regulation existed. Compliance presupposes SBOM coverage across legacy portfolios. The formal SBOM mandate begins December 2027. The operational SBOM deadline is September 2026.
DOJ enforcement expanded in both directions. Swiss Automation ($421,234): DFARS 7012 violations not part of the original whistleblower complaint. December 2025 criminal indictment: prosecution of a named individual for falsified certifications. The enforcement surface runs from sub-$500K civil settlements to criminal charges against people. The question is no longer whether certifications are current. It is whether they were true.
Exposure Surface
A single-layer certification architecture is structurally obsolete. Organizations that collapse supervisory certification and litigation evidence into a single layer are manufacturing prosecution exhibits.
The NIS2 amendments reclassify approximately 22,500 entities from essential to important while 19 member states remain under reasoned opinion for failing to complete transposition. The compliance framework is being amended before it is uniformly implemented.
The assumption already invalid: that passing an audit in one jurisdiction reduces risk in another. It may increase it. The audit record becomes the evidentiary baseline against which a different enforcement regime measures divergence.
High-Stakes Mandates
CISA 2015: Extended through September 30, 2026, without amendment. Third statutory patch in twelve months.
EU CRA Vulnerability Reporting: Mandatory September 11, 2026. Legacy products included. Operational SBOM deadline: seven months. Formal SBOM mandate: twenty-two months.
NIS2 Targeted Amendments: Proposed January 20, 2026. Certification as presumption of conformity. Mandatory ransomware payment disclosure. Trilogue expected late 2026.
DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud: $52 million, nine settlements, FY2025. Criminal indictment of named individual. Certification accuracy is the prosecutable variable.
30-Day Projection
Germany's NIS2 registration deadline (April 2026) forces classification confirmation. CRA Single Reporting Platform enters testing. DOJ enforcement cadence suggests additional DFARS 7012 settlements as CMMC 2.0 activates. If NIS2 certification pathways harden while DOJ FCA enforcement continues expanding, dual compliance postures become audit triggers, not audit shields.
AUDIENCE_SCOPE: CISO_ONLY
VERDICT_MODE: INSTITUTIONAL_FRAME
PRESSURE_CLASS: CROSS_REGIME
ASSUMPTION_STATUS: INVALIDATED
RISK_VECTOR: CROSS_BORDER_REPLAY