In December 2025, attackers linked to Russia targeted parts of Poland’s electricity ecosystem in a way that should matter far beyond Poland. The incident showed how vulnerable distributed energy resources can be when communication and control components are weak, inconsistently managed, or simply overlooked.
What made the incident dangerous was not a dramatic blackout, but the fact that attackers were able to move quietly through systems for months that were assumed to be under control. The attack did not need to cause immediate outages to expose a deeper structural weakness.
The attack surface is growing faster than security maturity. Troy Gratama, Partner Manager at Sentyron, says: “Compliance can look perfect on paper, but the real question is whether your controls hold up in practice.”
Jaimy Thepass, Business Development Manager at Sentyron, adds: “In the Poland case, basic failures such as reused credentials and attackers remaining undetected for months made the situation far more serious.”
What actually happened in Poland
Public reporting shows that the incident unfolded as a coordinated cyber operation rather than a single disruptive moment. There was no physical attack and no immediate large-scale outage. Instead, the risk lay in what attackers could access and influence.
- From IT into OT, where cyber becomes physical: The attackers did not stop at office IT systems. They moved toward OT, targeting communication and control layers between distributed energy producers and grid operators. This IT-to-OT transition is where a cyber incident becomes a physical safety and reliability issue.
- Communication as the primary attack vector: Rather than focusing on individual power plants, the attackers targeted communication paths: the links that allow operators to monitor and control wind, solar, and CHP installations. If those links are disrupted or manipulated, operators lose situational awareness even if the generation itself continues.
- Disruption over wiper malware: The use of wiper malware, reported by multiple security researchers, points to an intent to disrupt or pre-position for sabotage rather than steal data or demand ransom. This is typical of state-aligned OT attacks, where leverage and destabilization matter more than short-term gain. The incident was contained before large-scale outages occurred. That should be seen as a narrow escape, not proof that the system was resilient by design.
What the Poland incident really exposed
After incidents like this, the reflex is often to say ‘monitor better’ or ‘test more’. Those steps help, but they can also create a false sense of certainty. The deeper issue is the gap between policy and reality. Troy describes a familiar paradox: “People think it’s monitored well. And then it turns out it wasn’t, because the use case didn’t trigger on what was actually happening.”
If attackers can manipulate communication paths, devices, or firmware, monitoring may continue to work perfectly, while showing a version of reality that has already been shaped by an intruder.
Distributed energy means distributed risk
The energy transition spreads generation and control across many sites and many device types. That changes the economics of security. One weak component may not be catastrophic on its own, but thousands of them create scale, complexity, and opportunities for lateral movement.
As Troy puts it: “A hacker gets in through an opening, scans, and then starts hopping. Once that starts, the question becomes how quickly lateral movement can be stopped and how much damage can be contained.” Distributed assets are often connected through remote access, vendor tooling, and cloud services, with responsibilities split between operators, producers, integrators, and manufacturers. That fragmentation is exactly what sophisticated attackers exploit.
Why compliance and monitoring are not enough
The Poland incident shows the limits of security models that assume the internal network can be trusted. When attackers are already inside, the real question is not whether you can see them, but what they are allowed to touch.
- Enforced segmentation: Logical separation alone is often insufficient. Strong, enforced segmentation between IT, OT, and critical control zones limits lateral movement and reduces blast radius when something goes wrong.
- Communication integrity as a security anchor: When endpoints and supply chains cannot be fully trusted, protecting the integrity of communication itself becomes critical. We need solutions that ensure that commands and telemetry cannot be silently altered.
- High-assurance architectures: Regain control through enforced boundaries: segmentation, high-assurance communication, and one-way data flows are among the most effective ways to reduce systemic risk in complex, distributed environments.
Living with mixed supply chains
Critical infrastructure will continue to rely on globally sourced hardware and software. Replacement cycles are slow, and full sovereignty will take years. Jaimy notes: “Those components are not going to disappear overnight.”
That makes architectural controls essential. When you cannot immediately replace technology, you must constrain it, limiting what devices can reach, what they can control, and how information flows across boundaries. Sentyron’s approach focuses on resilience under compromise rather than confidence under compliance. As Troy puts it: “Assume someone is already inside. If the same kind of mistake happened to you, how have you arranged things?”
Why this matters beyond Poland
The dynamics exposed by the Poland incident are not unique to one country or one grid. Similar architectures, supply chains, and operational models exist across energy, transport, water, telecom, and industrial infrastructure worldwide. Wherever IT and OT are connected, and wherever distributed assets are remotely managed, the same structural risks apply.
That makes this incident relevant not just for national grids, but for critical infrastructure operators across regions and sectors who face increasing digitalization, geopolitical pressure, and regulatory requirements.