Jacek Jastrzębski, Chair of the KNF, attended the panel entitled ‘Tackling cyberrisks and maintaining the operational resilience of critical financial infrastructure in unstable times’ at the international conference organised by the Estonian supervision authority, Finantsinspektsioon.

During his intervention, the Chair of KNF shared Poland’s experience related to building the resilience of the financial sector against cyber threats. He pointed to the importance of cooperation and trust as cornerstones for the effective protection against cyber attacks. To illustrate this approach, he referred to the CSIRT KNF, a cybersecurity team existing at the UKNF since 2019, set up to coordinate actions and support the handling of security incidents at financial market entities, which also collects and analyses information about threats from supervised entities, and distributes recommendations for the entire sector. He stated that the establishment of the team had brought many benefits. Thanks to the expedient flow of information and cooperation, the Polish supervision authority is able to respond on a real-time basis, eliminate vulnerabilities, and take preventive actions before threats affect other entities. He added that an important component of the team’s activity was the building of open, trust-based relations with business partners, allowing for transparent and swift reporting. This kind of approach is of key importance for the effective protection of the financial sector.

In the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Jacek Jastrzębski indicated that the activities of the Polish supervisor over that period had comprised several stages. Initially, those were activities aimed at securing the stability of the Polish financial sector and, in parallel, supporting Ukrainian nationals arriving in Poland, with the aim to, among others, onboard them to the Polish financial sector or provide insurance coverage to them. The next stage was a time for an active dialogue and learning lessons from the experience of the Ukrainian supervision authority and financial institutions, in particular in the area of ensuring business continuity and crisis management in extreme conditions.

The Chair of the KNF supported the idea of making joint efforts to create sectoral or cross-sectoral ‘resilience centres’. He emphasised that this was a space that needed to be explored. This is also about looking for solutions that could be used to share data and information in the area of cooperation for cyber resilience with entities that usually compete with each other. This would be particularly helpful for the smallest entities, which are often unable to bear high costs in this regard themselves. He pointed to the great value of exchanging good practices in the area of building resilience of the financial market among supervisory authorities and expressed readiness to exchange experience and knowledge in this regard.

In 2026, the conference initiated by Finantsinspektsioon will be held in Warsaw and it will be organised by the KNF as part of its 20th anniversary: link to the press release

You can watch a video from the panel on YouTube.