
AI-ready knowledge base of security & compliance regulations for hardware and connected-device manufacturers - structured, indexed, and machine-readable for LLMs and agents.
A fact-checked, open reference on the EU laws that govern hardware and IoT cybersecurity — CRA, RED, NIS2, and the Cybersecurity Act/EUCC, in one place instead of four.
Prepared by Platanor Technologies (platanor.com) — an embedded security firm for IoT device manufacturers.
Contents: Quick start · What this is · Repository structure · Methodology · Using with an LLM · Claude Skill · Feedback · License
cra/faq.md, , , or — each is a practical Q&A for hardware/IoT manufacturers, no legal background required.cra/product-risk-classes.md and red/essential-requirements.md, does a Wi-Fi-connected baby monitor need a notified body, or can we self-assess?"primary-sources/ — full official text, chunked by article.This is NOT legal advice. The materials in this repository are a reference knowledge base on the main pieces of EU law that touch hardware and IoT cybersecurity — the Cyber Resilience Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/2847), the Radio Equipment Directive (Directive 2014/53/EU and its cybersecurity delegated act), the NIS2 Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2555), and the Cybersecurity Act (Regulation (EU) 2019/881, including the EUCC certification framework) — prepared to help you orient yourself in the topic, not to inform legal or compliance decisions.
Hardware and IoT manufacturers selling into the EU are increasingly subject to more than one regulation at once — the CRA governs the product, RED governs radio equipment specifically (with its own overlapping cybersecurity requirements), NIS2 governs certain organisations in critical sectors (including some manufacturers and their customers), and the Cybersecurity Act provides the voluntary certification framework (EUCC) that sits alongside all of them. This repository exists because treating any one of these in isolation gives an incomplete picture — a manufacturer can be in full CRA compliance and still miss a RED-specific requirement, or misjudge whether NIS2 reaches them indirectly through a customer's supply-chain obligations.
The repository has two layers:
cra/, red/, nis2/, csa/) — shorter, structured reference documents per regulation: overview, definitions/scope, essential requirements or obligations, deadlines, penalties, and a practical FAQ. Easy to use for a quick grasp of a topic, and each one is written to flag how it relates to the other three regulations, not just to stand alone.primary-sources/) — the full official text of each regulation and related act, unmodified. The source of truth for exact quotes, for humans and LLMs alike.The processed guides have been fact-checked against the primary text of each regulation and related sources (M/606, delegated/implementing acts) — methodology described below.
| File | What it covers |
|---|---|
cra/overview.md | Adoption context, scope, structure of the regulation (chapters and annexes) |
cra/definitions.md | Official definitions and terminology (product with digital elements, RDPS, critical/important product, etc.) |
cra/essential-requirements.md | Annex I essential cybersecurity requirements + status of harmonised standards development (mandate M/606); cross-referenced against ENISA's Secure by Design and Default Playbook |
cra/product-risk-classes.md | Product risk classification: Default, Important Class I/II, Critical |
cra/obligations-by-role.md | Manufacturer, importer, and distributor obligations (Chapter II) |
cra/timeline-deadlines.md | Key deadlines and transitional provisions |
cra/vulnerability-reporting.md | Vulnerability and severe-incident reporting (Article 14) |
cra/penalties-enforcement.md | Penalties and market surveillance |
cra/self-assessment-maturity-model.md | ENISA SME Cyber Resilience Maturity Assessment Model |
| File | What it covers |
|---|---|
red/overview.md | Scope, structure, relationship to the CRA |
red/essential-requirements.md | Art. 3(3)(d)(e)(f) cybersecurity requirements, EN 18031-1/-2/-3 and their restrictions |
red/obligations-by-role.md | Manufacturer, importer, and distributor obligations (Chapter II) |
red/timeline-deadlines.md | Key deadlines: the directive, the cybersecurity delegated act, harmonised standards |
red/penalties-enforcement.md | Penalties (set by national law, not EU-wide) and market surveillance |
red/faq.md | Practical FAQ for hardware/IoT manufacturers |
| File | What it covers |
|---|---|
nis2/overview.md | Scope, essential/important entity split, structure |
nis2/obligations.md | Governance (Art. 20), risk-management measures (Art. 21), essential vs. important supervision (Art. 32/33), fines (Art. 34) |
nis2/incident-reporting.md | Reporting obligations (Art. 23) — notification clock, comparison with CRA Art. 14 |
nis2/faq.md | Practical FAQ for hardware/IoT manufacturers and their customers |
| File | What it covers |
|---|---|
csa/overview.md | ENISA mandate + the European cybersecurity certification framework, relationship to CRA/RED/NIS2 |
csa/eucc-certification.md | EUCC certification mechanics — assurance levels, voluntary status, issuing bodies |
csa/faq.md | Practical FAQ on CSA/EUCC for hardware/IoT manufacturers |
| File | What it covers |
|---|---|
relationship-to-other-eu-law.md | How the CRA interacts with other EU law: RED, NIS2, AI Act, CSA/EUCC, GDPR, and others |
cra-red-ce-marking-guide.md | Practical step-by-step guide to CE marking under both CRA and RED |
primary-sources/ | Full official text of the CRA, M/606, RED, NIS2, CSA, and related acts |
Every statement is checked against a source-priority order: primary text of the regulation (EUR-Lex) > official related documents (standardisation mandates, delegated/implementing acts) > secondary sources > our own analysis. Where there is an open question or a not-yet-finalised rule (e.g. the draft amendment to M/606), this is explicitly flagged in the text as pending official confirmation, not stated as settled fact.
These files are designed to serve as context for language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) — for example:
.md file (or several) as context to your prompt when asking a model about CRA, RED, NIS2 or CSA/EUCC — the processed guides are enough for a quick answer; for an exact article quote, use a file from primary-sources/;primary-sources/ are already split by ### Article N headings, which are natural chunking boundaries;llms.txt — a concise, machine-readable index of all files for AI agents.Since a model's answers will be grounded in these files, the disclaimer above applies to any LLM output built on this base too — those answers are likewise not legal advice.
This repository has a SKILL.md file at its root, alongside the reference files — so it can be installed as a Claude Skill: a packaged capability that Claude loads automatically whenever a question matches its topic, instead of you having to attach files by hand every time. Installation differs by product, since Skills don't sync across surfaces:
Claude Code (filesystem-based, no upload step):
git clone https://github.com/Platanor/hardware-compliance-handbook.git ~/.claude/skills/hardware-compliance-handbook
Use ~/.claude/skills/ for a personal install available in every project, or clone into a project's own .claude/skills/ folder to scope it to that project. Claude Code discovers SKILL.md automatically — no restart or extra config needed.
claude.ai, Claude Desktop, or Cowork:
zip -r hardware-compliance-knowledge-base.zip . run from inside the repo folder).Skills uploaded this way are tied to your individual account — each teammate who wants it needs to upload it separately.
Claude API / your own application: upload the repository as a Custom Skill through the Skills API (/v1/skills). See Anthropic's Agent Skills documentation for the full reference.
However you install it, this remains a knowledge base, not a certified compliance tool — the disclaimer at the top of this README applies to anything Claude produces using it.
Actively growing. Currently 25 processed documents across four regulations (CRA, RED, NIS2, CSA/EUCC) plus 8 primary-source mirrors; more material is planned as the underlying legislation develops (new harmonised standards, delegated/implementing acts, Commission guidance, and the still-unmirrored EUCC scheme implementing act).
Found an error, an outdated date, or an inaccurate interpretation? Let us know — contact details at platanor.com, or open an issue or pull request directly. See CONTRIBUTING.md for what belongs here and how to submit a change.
This content is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
This means you're free to copy, redistribute, adapt, and even use these materials commercially — provided you give attribution: credit Platanor Technologies (platanor.com) as the source and link to the license.
Full license text: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. Details in the LICENSE file.
If this saved you from reading four EU regulations back to back, a ⭐ on the repo helps other manufacturers find it too.
cra/faq.md| Practical FAQ for hardware/IoT manufacturers |