Over the weekend Macedonia's state systems were the target of a coordinated cyberattack. Minister for Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski confirmed: government websites, ministries, and the national portal uslugi.gov.mk were under attack. The type - DDoS, with millions of requests whose purpose is simple: overload the system and make it unreachable.

Andonovski says the systems defended themselves. "No data was found stolen, deleted, or infiltrated," the Ministry says. The system was in "heightened security mode" for about 20 minutes. After additional checks and scans, things returned to normal.

The analysis shows the attacks came from abroad, through proxy servers that masked the attackers' identities. The case has been forwarded to the Interior Ministry for further investigation.

"Attacks will happen. We have to stay alert. As a NATO member, we must treat the protection of digital infrastructure with the utmost seriousness," Andonovski told TV4. That's a standard line for a politician - but the questions citizens have aren't about the line, they're about concrete mechanisms. How many incident response centres does Macedonia have? How many trained cybersecurity specialists does the state administration have? When was the system last tested by an external penetration team?

All those questions have answers - and all those answers matter for whether, the next time, when the attack is serious (not DDoS, but one aimed at infiltration and data theft), the system holds. A DDoS attack is the most basic type of cyber-attack - it's, literally, what any 17-year-old hacker can do from home. If that kind of attack stressed the systems for 20 minutes, the question is - how would they hold up against something harder?

The Ministry has announced a capacity boost through the National Cybersecurity Strategy 2025-2028. That's a document - not implementation. Implementation requires money, trained people, and time. Only then will it be clear whether Macedonia actually has the capability to defend itself in digital space, or only has messages about it.