Warsaw. An employee of Chopin Airport stole sensitive data. The Internal Security Agency was notified

An employee of Chopin Airport copied sensitive data to an external hard drive. The airport management dismissed him from his job and notified the Internal Security Agency, which carries out further actions.

Radio Zet was the first to report the incident. According to the radio station, an employee of the IT department of Polskie Porty Lotnicze, which manages the Okęcie airport, was caught copying sensitive data to an external hard drive. The incident was reported to the Internal Security Agency.

“We would like to inform you that the report regarding the IT incident was submitted by Polskie Porty Lotnicze SA to the CSIRT GOV Computer Security Incident Response Team in accordance with the Act of July 5, 2018 on the national cybersecurity system,” the ABW press team told Radio Zet.

The report of the incident was confirmed by Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesman for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration, in a telephone conversation with TVN24 reporter Sebastian Napieraj.

CSIRT GOV is the Computer Security Incident Response Team. He reports to the head of the Internal Security Agency. One of its basic tasks is to recognize, prevent and detect threats to security that are important from the point of view of the continuity of the functioning of the state's ICT systems of public administration bodies or the ICT network system covered by a uniform list of facilities, installations, devices and services included in the critical infrastructure.

“Our services acted in accordance with procedures”

We asked Anna Dermont, spokeswoman for PPL and Chopin Airport, to comment on this matter.

– Chopin Airport does not have access to airline passenger databases, so there is no risk of their dissemination. In the case described by Radio ZET, our internal services acted in accordance with extensive cybersecurity procedures – they detected and prevented unauthorized activities related to copying data to an external medium by one of the IT department employees, Dermont said.

– The employee was immediately dismissed from his job. In accordance with our internal regulations, we report each such case to the Internal Security Agency, which conducts further investigations – added the airport representative.

She emphasized that Polskie Porty Lotnicze treats cybersecurity issues with the utmost seriousness. – The applicable multi-level security systems and implemented procedures are intended to prevent such situations and, as was the case in this case, to identify and counteract threats – added Anna Dermont.