– Poland is currently the most attacked country in the European Union – said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski on Tuesday after a meeting with representatives of the White House. He announced that the US and Poland will tighten cooperation in the field of cybersecurity.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs is in the US. He met there with the US National Security Advisor dealing with cybersecurity, Anne Neuberger. – Poland is today the most attacked a country of the European Union in terms of cyber incidents (…), everything indicates that most of these attacks come from Russia and Belarus. Day by day we see the number of incidents growing rapidly – he said at a briefing.
Krzysztof Gawkowski TVN24
– In recent months, this daily number has jumped to two thousand reported incidents, and the interventions undertaken by Polish services amount to 600-700 per day. This is an increase of 100 percent compared to 2023 and 400 percent compared to 2022 – Gawkowski enumerated.
– This shows that Poland is already in a cyber cold war with Russia and one of the main meetings here in the United States were talks on strengthening the Polish cyber shield as part of cooperation with the White House – he added.
According to the minister, Poland is the main target of Russian attacks due to its support for Ukraine and being “the main transportation route for logistics and equipment” sent to Ukrainians.
Announcement of strengthening cooperation with the USA
The Deputy Prime Minister announced that during Tuesday's meeting a decision was made to strengthen cooperation between Poland and the US in this matter, including the exchange of information and experiences between the services and the establishment of special groups of experts from both countries.
At the same time, Gawkowski assessed that Poland has so far been able to cope with Russian cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, and its services are assessed by the United States as among the best in the world.
He also added that United States have a better overview of the threats in this area for Poland than European Union. – The European Union is aware that the number of incidents is growing, but no one in the European Union is aware that it is growing by leaps and bounds from day to day. The Americans are aware of this. Today, the Americans have announced that (…) Poland is the most exposed of all European Union countries in the area of critical infrastructure – said the minister.
– We talked today about possible attacks on hospitals, power plants, water and sewage systems. They have the same diagnosis. In other European Union countries, it is not diagnosed in this way and this is a problem – he added. He also assured that the Polish government is investing in cybersecurity enormous funds, which is appreciated by the American partners.
Gawkowski's visit to the United States
Tuesday is the second day of the deputy prime minister's visit to the United States. On Monday, he met in California with the management of American technology giants, including Google and Meta. Gawkowski said he spoke with them about investment support for research and development (R&D) projects in Poland, the responsibility of digital companies for verifying the age of users to protect the youngest users, and the need for corporations to pay authors of content used to train artificial intelligence models. Additionally, the minister also spoke with representatives of the Intel corporation about accelerating state support for the construction of a semiconductor factory near Wrocław.
On Wednesday, the Deputy Prime Minister will meet with the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), General Timothy Haugh.
Main image source: TVN24