[FINAL] having become aware of an incident.​”​ Competent Authorities will have the flexibility to assess a request for incident reporting after this deadline and will be able to agree to requests if they are justified. The Government understands that these measures will involve costs to Operators, but believes that there is a strong public and national benefit from improving the security of the UK’s essential services and digital service providers. 7. Digital service providers (DSP) Although a small majority of respondents agreed with the Government’s proposal to define Digital Service Providers, it is clear that this continues to be a challenge. Defining Digital Service Providers in a manner that is both compatible with the Directive and clear to individual Digital Service Providers is not simple. The Government’s intention has always been to try to make it clear who was in scope and who was without, and to limit the scope of those who have to comply with the Directive to those companies whose loss of service could have the greatest impact on the UK economy either directly or through impact on other companies. A number of respondents requested that the definitions be amended to exclude Software as a Service. The Government believes that Software as a Service providers play an important role in the UK’s economy and it is right that they are held responsible for ensuring the security of their network and information systems. It considers its approach, as revised below, is appropriate, in line with the requirements of the Directive, and will ensure that only those Software as a Service providers that provide elastic and scalable resources to their customers are included. The regulations implementing the NIS Directive will reflect the wording of the Directive: ● “​digital service​” means a service within the meaning of point (b) of Article 1(1) of Directive (EU) 2015/1535 of the European Parliament and of the Council which is a type listed in Annex 3 [of the Directive]”; ● “​digital service provider​” means any legal person that provides a digital service; ● “​online marketplace​” means a digital service that allows consumers and/or traders as respectively defined in point (a) and in point (b) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2013/11/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council to conclude online sales or service contracts with traders either on the online marketplace’s website or on a trader’s website that uses computing services provided by the online marketplace; ● “​online search engine​” means a digital service that allows users to perform searches of, in principle, all websites or websites in a particular language on the basis of a query on any subject in the form of a keyword, phrase or other input and returns links in which information related to the requested content can be found; Page 13