Cyberattacks on Polish Critical Infrastructure

Poland has become a prime target for organized hacker groups. In 2024, over 627,000 cybersecurity incidents were reported — a 60% increase compared to the previous year. Ransomware attacks, once sporadic, now pose a daily threat to hospitals, water utilities, energy infrastructure, and public administration. In this context, professional backup solutions are no longer an optional add-on but a foundation of organizational cyber resilience.

The Scale of the Threat: Poland at the Center of Cyber Warfare

Data from Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs and CERT Polska paint a clear picture: Poland is one of the most frequently attacked countries in Europe. Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski confirmed that the country’s critical infrastructure is attacked daily, often by groups linked to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Attacks on strategic sectors are particularly alarming. In March 2025, cybercriminals attacked the Ministry of Internal Affairs hospital in Krakow, blocking access to critical IT systems. Earlier, in Q1 2025, the railway ticket sales system was targeted. A series of incidents also affected water and sewage infrastructure — from Wydminy through Kuźnica to Witkowo — where hackers manipulated pumping station and water treatment parameters.

Backup Under Fire: Why Traditional Methods Fail

Modern ransomware attacks differ fundamentally from those of a few years ago. According to Sophos research, 94% of ransomware victims experienced attacks directly targeting their backup systems, and 57% of these attacks were successful. Attackers know that destroying backup copies dramatically increases the likelihood of ransom payment.

The statistics are alarming: only 32% of companies that paid ransom in 2024 recovered their data — down from 54% the year before. Cybercriminals increasingly fail to deliver on their promise of decryption keys or deliberately destroy data after receiving payment. The “pay and hope” strategy is no longer a rational option.

Immutable Backup: An Impenetrable Barrier Against Ransomware

In the face of evolving threats, the traditional approach to backup — based solely on access controls and permissions — proves insufficient. If an attacker gains access to an administrator account, they gain the same capabilities as a legitimate user: they can modify, encrypt, or delete backup copies.

Immutable backup represents a fundamental paradigm shift. Data written in immutable mode cannot be changed, encrypted, or deleted for a predetermined retention period — even by administrators with full privileges. This technology relies on object lock mechanisms that place a time-based hold on data objects, creating a digital “time vault.”

Key Benefits of Immutable Backup

• Encryption resistance: Ransomware cannot encrypt backup files marked as immutable.
• Privilege abuse protection: Even compromised administrator accounts cannot bypass immutability rules.
• Recovery guarantee: Organizations with immutable backups report 4x faster recovery times and are 50% less likely to pay ransom.
• Regulatory compliance: Many cyber insurance policies now require immutable backup as a condition of coverage.

Storware Backup and Recovery: Proven Protection for Demanding Environments

Storware Backup and Recovery is a comprehensive, enterprise-grade solution for backup, snapshot management, and disaster recovery across virtualized environments and cloud infrastructures. Built on the principle of “freedom of choice,” it provides organizations with the flexibility to implement tailored data protection strategies while ensuring resilience, security, and operational efficiency.

Storware’s architecture supports the 3-2-1-1 strategy: three copies of data, on two different media types, with one copy off-site and one copy immutable. This approach eliminates single points of failure and provides multi-layered protection against various data loss scenarios. Learn more in our technical documentation.

Practical Recommendations: How to Implement an Effective Backup Strategy

1. Define retention periods: A minimum of 14-30 days of immutable backup allows you to outlast the typical attacker dwell time in the network before launching the actual attack.

2. Separate administrative roles: Separate backup management from immutability policy management. Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all administrative accounts.

3. Use object storage with native immutability: Solutions like S3 Object Lock provide hardware-level data immutability guarantees.

4. Regularly test recovery procedures: Immutable backup is only valuable if you can successfully restore data from it. Regular DR testing should be standard practice.

5. Monitor and audit: Implement solutions to track all backup access and modification attempts. Early anomaly detection can prevent attack escalation.

Conclusion: Time to Act

Cyber threats targeting Polish infrastructure are not an abstract risk — they are daily attacks on water utilities, hospitals, transportation, and public administration. In an environment where 94% of ransomware attacks target backup systems, and only one in three companies recovers data after paying ransom, immutable backup is no longer a premium option — it has become the foundation of cyber resilience.

Storware Backup and Recovery provides organizations with the tools needed to build an effective defense: immutable storage, flexible retention policies, instant recovery, and seamless integration with cloud and on-premise infrastructure. It is a proven, expert-driven solution designed to simplify backup complexity in the most demanding enterprise environments.

Sources

• Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs — Cybersecurity Incident Data 2024 — cyberdefence24.pl
• CERT Polska — Annual Report 2023/2024 — cert.pl
• Check Point Research — Cybersecurity Report Poland 2024 — checkpoint.com
• Sophos — State of Ransomware 2024/2025 — sophos.com
• CyberDefence24.pl — Critical Infrastructure Attack Reports — cyberdefence24.pl
• Centre for e-Health (Centrum e-Zdrowia) — Healthcare Sector Attack Statistics — cez.gov.pl
• Object First — Zero Trust Data Resilience Survey 2024 — objectfirst.com
• Storware Blog — Understanding Immutable Backups — storware.eu/blog
• Storware Documentation — docs.storware.eu