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The National Cybersecurity System is a key component of Poland’s cybersecurity law. Its purpose is to ensure a high level of digital security and maintain the operational continuity of critical IT systems across the country. It defines the obligations of operators of essential services, digital service providers, and public authorities in areas such as risk management, IT infrastructure security, and cybersecurity incident response. The National Cybersecurity System covers a broad range of entities whose activities are critical to the functioning and security of the state.
What Is the KSC and Why Is It Important for IT Infrastructure?
The National Cybersecurity System (KSC) provides the legal and organizational framework defining how IT infrastructure should be designed, secured, and maintained to ensure resilience against cyber threats and the continuity of essential and digital services. In practice, the KSC covers not only procedures and documentation but, above all, the specific technologies used by organizations.
From an IT infrastructure perspective, the KSC focuses on areas such as:
- system and data availability,
- resilience against failures and cyberattacks, including ransomware,
- information integrity and confidentiality,
- the ability to detect and respond to incidents quickly.
This means that technologies such as virtualization, storage systems, backup solutions, network security, monitoring, incident management tools, and access control play a crucial role. These solutions determine whether an organization can meet the KSC requirements in practice.
The KSC requires a systematic approach to IT infrastructure. Organizations must move away from isolated security measures and adopt a consistent security architecture in which every component—from networks and servers to data and users—has a defined role in protecting the organization against cyber threats.
Entities covered by Poland’s National Cybersecurity System
Poland’s National Cybersecurity System covers a broad range of entities that are critical to the security, stability, and effective functioning of the country. These include operators of essential services, such as organizations in the energy, transport, banking, and healthcare sectors. They provide services that are fundamental to everyday life and the efficient operation of the economy.
Digital service providers are another important group. These are entities that deliver services electronically, including online marketplaces, cloud computing providers, and search engines. Their role within the National Cybersecurity System continues to grow as an increasing number of business and administrative processes are carried out online.
Compliance with KSC requirements is supervised by public authorities responsible for individual sectors. They are supported by sectoral cybersecurity teams established to coordinate activities and exchange information within specific areas, such as transport or digital services.
As a result, Poland’s National Cybersecurity System covers both public- and private-sector entities, creating a consistent framework for protecting essential services and critical IT infrastructure.
What Obligations Does Poland’s National Cybersecurity System Impose?
The Act on the National Cybersecurity System defines a range of obligations that directly affect how IT infrastructure is designed and maintained. The key areas that organizations must address are outlined below.
Regular Cybersecurity Risk Identification and Assessment
Organizations are required to identify and assess cybersecurity risks associated with the IT systems used to provide essential or digital services. A key part of this process is estimating risk to identify threats and determine both the likelihood of incidents and their potential consequences.
In practice, this requires an analysis of the IT architecture, system vulnerabilities, security configurations, and dependencies between servers, networks, data, and users. It should also consider potential incidents that could significantly disrupt essential services.
Cybersecurity risk assessments should be conducted regularly and updated whenever the infrastructure changes—for example, when new systems are introduced, data is migrated, or cloud services are implemented.
Cybersecurity Incident Management
The KSC requires organizations to implement processes for preventing, detecting, and responding to cybersecurity incidents. They must also establish procedures for handling serious incidents to ensure effective response, reporting, and cooperation throughout the incident management process.
This requires tools for monitoring IT infrastructure, centralizing event logs, and detecting anomalies quickly. IT systems should provide the information needed to identify and analyze incidents that could threaten service security.
ITSM systems also play an important role. They enable organizations to register incidents, assign priorities, and document every stage of the response for audit and compliance purposes.
Business Continuity and Crisis Management
Organizations must ensure the continuity of essential services even in the event of a technical failure or cyberattack. IT teams should use solutions such as system redundancy, backups, data replication, snapshots, and IT environment recovery procedures.
Business continuity plans should include clearly defined procedures for restoring the IT environment and resuming operations after an incident. They should also be tested regularly to confirm that the infrastructure allows the organization to return to normal operations quickly and that the implemented measures work effectively.
Reporting Incidents to a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT)
The KSC requires serious incidents to be reported promptly to the appropriate national-level CSIRT. Organizations must also cooperate with the relevant team throughout the incident response process.
This requires clear internal procedures defining when an event should be classified as an incident and who is responsible for escalating it. Incident classification is based on specific materiality thresholds that determine whether an incident is considered serious and what further action is required.
Organizations also need IT systems that allow them to quickly collect the technical information, logs, and other data required for incident reporting.
Compliance Documentation and Audits
Organizations must maintain documentation demonstrating compliance with KSC requirements and undergo periodic audits and inspections. The initial compliance audit is particularly important, as it is a key stage in confirming that an entity meets the requirements of the National Cybersecurity System.
The documentation should include not only policies and procedures but also descriptions of the IT infrastructure, security configurations, backup mechanisms, and data recovery processes. Outdated or inconsistent documentation can create difficulties during an audit and increase the risk of non-compliance.
Protection of Networks and Information Systems
The Act requires organizations to implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect networks, IT systems, and data. Technical safeguards should include firewalls, network segmentation, access control mechanisms, security monitoring, and regular system updates.
Organizations are responsible for the security of their services throughout the entire service lifecycle. Security measures should reflect the scale and nature of the organization’s activities and the actual threats it faces, rather than merely satisfying minimum formal requirements.
Cybersecurity Policies and Procedures
The Act requires organizations to develop, implement, and maintain up-to-date cybersecurity policies and procedures. These policies should address cybersecurity comprehensively, covering technical aspects, legal requirements, and the obligations of business entities.
The documentation should clearly define the rules for using IT systems, managing access rights, handling incidents, and responding to threats. Policies must accurately reflect how the organization’s IT infrastructure operates and should be understood by employees.
Procedures should also respect users’ rights and freedoms in the digital environment, ensuring that cybersecurity measures remain proportionate and compliant with applicable legal requirements.
Supply Chain Security
An important element of the KSC is addressing risks associated with suppliers, subcontractors, and technology partners. Third-party security management requires particular attention, especially when it involves personal data, confidential information, and legally protected information.
This includes monitoring outsourced services, cloud solutions, and systems maintained by third parties. Organizations should assess their suppliers’ security standards and clearly define requirements for data protection and cybersecurity incident response.
Documentation should include up-to-date contact details for key technology partners, including email addresses and registered office information. This enables organizations to exchange information quickly and report incidents to the relevant authorities.
Cryptography and Encryption
The Act requires organizations to use appropriate cryptographic and encryption mechanisms to protect data and communications. These requirements also reflect the European Commission’s implementing decision concerning the security of digital services.
Protection should cover both data at rest and data transmitted between systems. Effective cryptographic key management is just as important as implementing encryption itself.
Data protection is essential to the secure delivery of digital services because it helps ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information within the National Cybersecurity System.
Human Resources Security
The KSC emphasizes the role of people in cybersecurity. Organizations must provide appropriate training that enables employees to recognize threats. They should also define roles and permissions clearly and maintain effective access controls for IT systems.
Removing excessive privileges and regularly reviewing access rights significantly reduce the risk of incidents caused by human error or misuse.
Providing users with relevant cybersecurity knowledge is essential because end users are often the first line of defence against cyber threats.
Cooperation Between Entities Within the National Cybersecurity System
Effective protection of cyberspace requires close cooperation between all entities covered by the National Cybersecurity System. This includes sharing information about threats and incidents, as well as coordinating activities during crises.
Sectoral cybersecurity teams play a key role by supporting operators of essential services and digital service providers in incident management and the implementation of cybersecurity best practices.
Cooperation takes place at both national and international levels, involving European Union institutions and other countries. This helps establish a common level of security for networks and information systems.
Sectoral cybersecurity teams facilitate rapid threat response, knowledge sharing, and coordinated action when incidents could significantly affect the functioning of the state.
Through this cooperation, Poland’s National Cybersecurity System becomes more resilient to emerging challenges and better equipped to protect the interests of society and the economy in the digital world.
Supervision and enforcement under the National Cybersecurity System
The effectiveness of the National Cybersecurity System depends not only on implementing appropriate technical and organizational measures but also on effective supervision and enforcement. Public authorities responsible for cybersecurity monitor whether operators of essential services and digital service providers comply with KSC requirements.
When violations are identified, supervisory authorities may impose financial penalties and issue administrative decisions requiring the organization to restore compliance. Particular emphasis is placed on protecting personal data in accordance with the GDPR. Entities covered by the National Cybersecurity System must therefore ensure information security throughout every stage of service delivery.
Effective supervision and enforcement help ensure that all entities follow consistent rules and maintain a high standard of protection for cyberspace and user data in accordance with applicable regulations and security standards.
IT infrastructure architecture compliant with the national cybersecurity system
Meeting the requirements of Poland’s National Cybersecurity System requires a comprehensive, layered approach to IT infrastructure architecture. It should cover every level of the environment—from networks and server systems to data, applications, users, and operational processes.
Organizations should move away from isolated security measures and adopt a consistent architecture in which individual infrastructure components complement and reinforce one another.
The KSC does not mandate specific technologies, but it clearly defines the technical outcomes that an IT architecture should deliver. These include:
- limiting the impact of cybersecurity incidents,
- ensuring the continuous availability of essential services,
- protecting data against loss or unauthorized modification,
- enabling the rapid detection, analysis, and management of incidents.
Achieving these goals requires the careful selection of IT solutions, including virtualization, network segmentation, backup systems, data immutability mechanisms, monitoring, and incident management tools. These technologies must also be properly integrated into a single, consistent security architecture.
Virtualization
The virtualization layer is the foundation of modern IT infrastructure aligned with KSC requirements. It enables the logical separation of critical systems, limiting the spread of incidents and making cybersecurity risk management easier. In the event of a failure or attack, virtualization supports rapid service recovery through high-availability mechanisms, virtual machine migration, and backup restoration.
From a KSC perspective, key considerations include access control for the hypervisor layer, monitoring of administrative activity, and regular updates to virtual environment management components. The virtualization layer should also support rapid incident response. When designed correctly, it improves infrastructure resilience and reduces incident response times.
Virtual Work Environments
Virtual work environments play an important role in KSC-aligned IT architecture, particularly in the context of remote work and distributed access to systems. With virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), data is not stored on users’ endpoint devices, significantly reducing the risk of data loss or leakage.
KSC compliance is supported by mechanisms such as centralized access management, multi-factor authentication, user session recording, and segmented access to critical systems. VDI also makes it easier to revoke access quickly during an incident and analyze security events.
Hyperconverged Infrastructure
Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions combine computing, storage, and networking resources within a single, consistent system. This helps organizations meet KSC requirements for IT infrastructure availability and resilience.
These solutions also support uninterrupted operations during failures, helping entities covered by the National Cybersecurity System maintain business continuity. A simplified architecture reduces the number of critical points and makes security management easier.
From a KSC perspective, important capabilities include built-in high availability, automatic load balancing, and rapid service recovery. Centralized management also simplifies the documentation of configurations and changes, which is important during compliance audits.
Storage Systems
Data storage systems are a critical component of KSC-aligned IT architecture. They are directly responsible for the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of data, which is often one of an organization’s most valuable assets.
Regional environmental protection funds are an example of institutions that use advanced storage systems. These organizations implement modern solutions to protect and manage data related to financing environmental initiatives at the regional level.
In practice, KSC requirements are supported by storage solutions that provide data encryption, replication, resource segmentation, and data immutability mechanisms such as WORM. Combining these capabilities with monitoring and access control reduces the risk of unauthorized data modification and supports incident analysis.
Snapshots and Data Immutability
Regular snapshots created at the storage array level provide an additional layer of protection against failures and ransomware attacks. They allow data to be restored quickly to its pre-incident state, minimizing system downtime.
A lack of regular snapshots can negatively affect system continuity and lead to serious disruption following an incident.
When combined with data immutability mechanisms, snapshots support KSC requirements for business continuity and IT infrastructure resilience. Regular snapshot recovery tests are essential to confirm their effectiveness in a crisis.
Backup Systems
Backup systems are among the most important components of IT architecture aligned with KSC requirements. The Act requires organizations to be capable of recovering systems and data effectively following a cybersecurity incident.
Data backup is also important for protecting the interests of international organizations, particularly when stored information is relevant to international cooperation or national security.
Modern backup systems provide encryption, backup isolation, data immutability, and regular recovery testing. Integrating backups with virtualization and storage infrastructure reduces service recovery times and limits the impact of incidents.
Network Security
The network layer plays a critical role in KSC-aligned architecture. Network segmentation, next-generation firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and secure VPN connections help prevent threats from spreading across the infrastructure.
From a KSC perspective, network traffic monitoring, event logging, and the rapid isolation of compromised infrastructure segments are particularly important. These measures enable effective incident response and help minimize the impact of cybersecurity threats.
Incident Management and Monitoring
Monitoring and incident management systems are the final—but essential—component of KSC-aligned IT architecture. Centralized log collection, event correlation, and ITSM tools enable organizations to identify incidents quickly and manage them effectively.
Monitoring systems support cybersecurity operations by providing oversight of IT system security in accordance with National Cybersecurity System requirements.
The KSC also requires organizations to document the actions taken during incident response. This documentation is important for both operational and audit purposes. A well-integrated operational layer connects every component of the IT architecture into a consistent security system.
IT Infrastructure audit for compliance with Poland’s National Cybersecurity System
Are you unsure whether your IT infrastructure meets KSC requirements? Would you like to assess how resilient your systems are to cybersecurity incidents?
We offer a KSC compliance audit of IT infrastructure, covering:
- IT architecture analysis,
- assessment of technical security measures,
- review of cybersecurity procedures,
- practical recommendations for corrective actions.
A KSC audit may also apply to digital service providers, including online marketplaces. As part of Poland’s digital infrastructure, these entities must meet specific security requirements under the National Cybersecurity System.