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EU-HYBNET
As the EU-HYBNET project reaches its conclusion with a review meeting with the European Commission this week, the Polish Platform for Homeland Security (PPHS) reflects on five years of committed engagement in building resilience against hybrid threats — a period that also marks a quarter of the organisation's 20-year history.
Throughout the project, PPHS played a dual role: contributing to core EU-HYBNET actions while also coordinating national-level initiatives in Poland. From supporting pan-European knowledge exchange to promoting awareness of hybrid threats domestically, PPHS has helped shape the project’s success both operationally and strategically.
Two key articles published by PPHS underscore this impact:
- Hybrid Threats: Contemporary Forms of Exerting Political Pressure: This piece explores how hybrid tactics — from information manipulation to pressure on institutions — are reshaping the geopolitical landscape, echoing themes tackled in EU-HYBNET workshops and discussions.
- Critical Infrastructure Threats: The Basics: This article reflects one of EU-HYBNET’s key focus areas — the protection of vital systems and sectors in the face of evolving, cross-domain threats.
Through its involvement, PPHS:
- Organised and hosted local and regional engagements to contextualise hybrid threats within Poland’s security environment.
- Contributed expertise to policy briefs, risk assessments, and capability gap analyses.
- Actively participated in knowledge-sharing events, helping bridge practice and policy between EU institutions and national stakeholders.
As EU-HYBNET transitions its legacy to the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, the PPHS team encourages a continued focus on:
- Integrating hybrid threat awareness into national resilience strategies.
- Ensuring continuity of cross-sectoral cooperation across EU Member States.
- Maintaining momentum in training, innovation, and public awareness — particularly around critical infrastructure and information ecosystems.
To close this phase of our work, we felt it would be fitting to hear from members of the PPHS team who contributed directly to the project throughout its five years:
Małgorzata Wolbach
PPHS Senior Project Officer
Participating in EU-HYBNET over the past few years has profoundly deepened my understanding of hybrid threats - not just as evolving and complex phenomena, but as tangible challenges with direct implications for Poland’s security environment. The project underscored the critical importance of building resilience at both national and European levels, particularly through collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and proactive engagement. On a personal level, this experience has sharpened my awareness of the urgency and multifaceted nature of hybrid threats, and inspired me to further explore this field - especially in the context of Europe’s shifting security landscape following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. EU-HYBNET provided a vital framework for understanding this new reality and reinforced the need to remain informed, engaged, and prepared in the face of ongoing and emerging threats.
Steven Ormston, PPHS Communication and Community Manager, adds and emphasises how the project turned an initially abstract concept into a practical framework for understanding and responding to the evolving landscape of hybrid threats.:
Steven Ormston
PPHS Communication and Community Manager
Over the past five years, I’ve gained significant knowledge and insight into the hybrid threats domain. When we first started in the EU-HYBNET project, I had a basic understanding of individual threat vectors — disinformation, cyber, economic coercion — but I didn’t yet grasp how these could be strategically combined into coordinated hybrid campaigns.
Initially, I found the topic abstract. At times, we spoke about hybrid threats without clear, consistent definitions or visible manifestations. The literature was fragmented, and the term itself was often applied inconsistently. The Conceptual Framework Model developed by Hybrid CoE and the JRC, released early in the project, was a turning point — offering a structured way to think about hybrid threats in terms of actors, tools, domains, and phases. It helped ground the conversations and gave us a shared language to work with.
Yet, just as the model was beginning to clarify things, the escalation of events culminating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine challenged many of our assumptions. Suddenly, we weren’t just dealing with sub-threshold interference — this was war. But not a traditional war alone. It was — and still is — a hybrid campaign in parallel with open conflict: cyberattacks, disinformation, sabotage, energy weaponisation, and attempts to destabilise democracies beyond the battlefield. What initially blurred the lines for me ultimately reaffirmed the model’s value — it captured exactly this kind of convergence and escalation across domains.
We’ve also seen that hybrid threats don’t need to be direct or overt. Often, it’s about adding external fuel to internal fires — exploiting societal vulnerabilities, inflaming divisions, and eroding trust. This subtlety is what makes hybrid campaigns so hard to identify, let alone prove. The bleed between topics, tools, and domains is precisely what makes continued analysis and engagement so necessary.
As noted in the Conceptual Model:
“It has shown how complex an issue the landscape of Hybrid Threats is. This also means that no single entity can address Hybrid Threats. A comprehensive and holistic approach needs to be adopted… a whole-of-society approach, bringing civil, military and political actors together, and duly leading to a new security ecosystem.”
For the last five years, EU-HYBNET has provided a vehicle to do just that — connecting a community of multidisciplinary stakeholders, sharing knowledge, and enabling a collective response. The project didn’t just stay with theory; it evolved with the threats. We talked about disinformation during the pandemic, analysed the weaponisation of infrastructure, and even looked ahead to challenges posed by AI-generated deepfakes and emerging tech. The adaptability of the model — and the project’s willingness to follow where reality led — is one of its greatest strengths.
It’s been a pleasure to participate in this work, and I’m especially grateful for the early leadership of Päivi Mattila, who helped steer the project’s energy and focus during its formative years. Now, as the initiative transitions to Hybrid CoE, I look forward to staying involved in the conversation.
