“Polish banks rank among Europe’s leaders in terms of digital maturity. Deloitte’s Digital Banking Maturity 2024 report found that 10% of Europe’s digital banking leaders are institutions from Poland. The scale of implementation — from cloud computing and robotic process automation to artificial intelligence-based solutions — shows that Poland’s financial sector is not only keeping pace with global trends, but in many areas is ahead of them. However, this digital acceleration comes at a cost. According to the Check Point Security Report 2025, Poland records an average of 1,850 attacks per week targeting financial institutions alone. Banking is becoming one of the most attractive targets for cybercriminals due to the scale of operations, the value of data and the growing complexity of IT environments.”
Cloud-first as the foundation of modern banking
The “cloud-first” strategy has now become the standard. Recommendations set out in the PolishCloud Standard 3.0, developed by the Polish Bank Association, indicate that the vast majority of domestic banks have either already adopted cloud technologies or are at an advanced stage of migration. The cloud enables financial institutions to scale their environments dynamically, shorten deployment times and build architectures resilient to overloads and incidents.
“In the financial sector, the cloud is no longer an alternative to traditional infrastructure, but its natural extension. It is an environment that enables the rapid deployment of new services, the development of real-time analytics and the secure processing of large volumes of data. Banks are increasingly designing hybrid or multicloud architectures in order to enhance flexibility and operational resilience,” says Piotr Zaborowski, Managing Consultant at Polcom.
As the Polcom expert notes, the key issue is not only moving systems to the cloud, but also designing an appropriate security architecture.
“Cloud migration without carefully planned environment segmentation, access controls and continuous monitoring may increase risk rather than reduce it. This is why a security-by-design approach is so important, with security treated as an integral part of the project rather than an add-on implemented at the end,” Piotr Zaborowski adds.
300 million automated tasks
Digital transformation is producing tangible results. PKO Bank Polski has automated 320 business processes. Its robots have already performed more than 300 million tasks, ranging from back-office operations to customer service support activities. The result has been lower operating costs, shorter process times and reduced workloads for employees performing repetitive tasks.
BNP Paribas Bank Polska has tested behavioural models that analyse customer data in order to personalise offers. Bank Pekao is developing the Empatia platform, a solution that uses AI algorithms to analyse customer experience. The tool has already processed hundreds of thousands of opinions concerning the mobile app, products, services and branch operations, providing management with synthesised feedback in near real time.
However, such deep integration of systems, data and algorithms also means increasingly complex IT environments.
“Every automation, every new API and every AI model expands the potential attack surface. The more integrated the service ecosystem becomes, the greater the importance of centralised security management, anomaly monitoring and testing of emergency scenarios,” the Polcom expert stresses.
New opportunities, new risk vectors
Particular challenges are associated with the growing use of generative AI. Banks are testing it in customer service, document automation, analyst support and text-based information processing. However, generative models require additional safeguards, both at the level of data and source files, as well as within the models’ operational logic.
“Generative models introduce a new category of risk. In addition to conventional infrastructure threats, there are issues related to the quality of training data, the possibility of prompt manipulation, information leakage and incorrect model responses. Banks must implement validation, audit and continuous oversight mechanisms for algorithmic performance,” says Piotr Zaborowski.
In practice, this means the need for regular resilience testing, attack simulations known as red teaming, round-the-clock monitoring of environments and the implementation of advanced anomaly-detection systems.
Resilience is becoming a competitive advantage
The scale of 1,850 attacks per week, according to Check Point data, shows that the financial sector now operates under constant cyber pressure. This is compounded by growing regulatory pressure, including the DORA Regulation and the NIS2 Directive, which require banks to manage ICT risk comprehensively, report incidents and test operational resilience.
“Regulations such as DORA are changing the perspective. It is no longer just about responding to incidents, but about building systemic resilience across the entire ecosystem — from data centres and cloud providers to technology partners. A bank must have full visibility over its ICT services supply chain and genuine control over risk,” Zaborowski explains.
In the coming years, the key competitive advantage will therefore not be innovation speed alone. In the banking sector of the future, the winners will be institutions that combine dynamic digitalisation with mature risk management.
Distributed architecture, data-centre redundancy, environment segmentation and real-time monitoring are no longer simply elements of competitive advantage. They are becoming essential conditions for maintaining customer trust and the stability of the financial system.
