New tasks for A4 highway patrols. Operator's CEO reveals massive cyberattacks

• The geopolitical situation and the changes that have taken place in this area over the last few years have led to changes in the work and organization of the A4 motorway manager between Katowice and Krakow.
• As Andrzej Kaczmarek, president of the management board of Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska, said during the "Investments, infrastructure, security" debate held in Katowice as part of the "Industry for defense" event , highway patrols have been given new tasks.
• - Poland needs a distributed infrastructure, which cannot be achieved solely by state forces - Kaczmarek also noted.

"The concession agreement dates back 30 years. Did anyone imagine back then that the motorway would be a military transport corridor ? Did the concept of cybersecurity even exist 30 years ago?" asked Andrzej Kaczmarek, CEO of Stalexport Autostrada Małopolska, during the "Investments, Infrastructure, Security" debate held in Katowice as part of the first edition of the "Defense Industry" event. As the CEO of the company managing the concession section of the A4 motorway between Katowice and Krakow emphasized, the geopolitical situation and changes that have occurred in this area over the past few years have also led to changes in the work and organization of the motorway manager.

"We have a strong IT department. There are dozens of cyberattacks every day. We also manage our infrastructure differently. Highway patrols, which were always dedicated to checking for infrastructure defects, have received new instructions – they are now monitoring situations such as someone hanging a camera on an overpass. We are trying to protect ourselves from these kinds of situations. We also have continuous information exchange with state institutions and services , something we didn't have before," said Andrzej Kaczmarek.

Let us remind you that whenever increased traffic of military columns on the roads is expected, the General Command of the Armed Forces appeals not to publish photos, recordings, locations, dates and times of the passage of these columns.

Poland needs a distributed infrastructure. The state alone cannot handle this.

As he emphasized, security is no longer perceived as the exclusive domain and task of the state.

"Now all private companies are playing their part," he said, arguing for the need for more programs that will launch and motivate private capital to invest in infrastructure. In this context, he pointed to the company he manages, whose concession to manage a section of the A4 motorway expires in March 2027, declaring that it can "mobilize enormous sums for new investments in road infrastructure." He pointed out that Poland needs a distributed infrastructure , which cannot be achieved solely by state forces, and that, meanwhile, security issues are no longer foreign to private companies.

- Critical infrastructure operators are non-state entities , the majority are private entities - noted Professor Mirosław Banasik from the Institute of Security of the State War Studies University, who participated in the discussion, emphasizing that for this reason, in the event of the occurrence of intense hybrid threats on a national scale, they should be identified and directed to a single point for continuous analysis and assessment in terms of how many such incidents have occurred and what consequences they may have.