Poland’s Private Security Market

For an international security manager, Poland’s private security market can initially look familiar. National operators, regional firms and smaller specialist providers compete for broadly the same types of corporate sites and use many of the security tools and operating models found elsewhere in Europe.

The differences become more apparent when looking at how the sector is regulated, the status of security personnel, the economics of guarding and, importantly, who actually delivers the service on the ground.

Those differences have become more significant in recent years. Recruiting suitable personnel is getting harder, pay expectations are rising and clients remain under pressure to control operating costs. The effect is increasingly visible at site level. Conventional CCTV is being supplemented by video analytics, automation is taking over some routine tasks, and certain static posts are becoming more difficult to justify economically. This does not necessarily make security simpler. In many cases, fewer people may be required, but considerably more is expected of those who remain.

At the same time, Poland’s wider security environment has changed. For an international organisation operating in the country, it is becoming increasingly important to look beyond headcount and hourly guarding rates and consider how the security model as a whole is designed.

A large, regulated market

According to estimates from the Polish Security Employers Association (PZPO), the sector is worth approximately PLN 16 billion and employs around 250,000 people. These are industry estimates rather than official government statistics, but they provide a useful indication of the scale of the market.

The provision of security services in Poland is regulated. Businesses providing protection of persons and property are, as a general rule, required to hold a ministerial concession — a statutory authorisation to conduct regulated security activity — issued by the Minister of the Interior and Administration. Polish legislation also establishes requirements covering areas such as business activity, record keeping and personnel.

For a British client, it is important not to interpret this concession through the lens of the UK licensing system. It is an authorisation for the company to conduct regulated security activity; it is not an equivalent of an SIA licence held by an individual security operative.

More importantly, the concession tells the client relatively little about how the service will actually perform. It does not demonstrate workforce stability, contract management quality, training standards, relief staffing, supervision or the way absence is managed. Nor does it establish whether the provider has the operational capability required to respond effectively to a serious incident. Security businesses can be inspected under Polish law, while certain specialist armed security units are subject to a separate and more specific form of police supervision. This should not be confused with continuous operational quality assurance across the private security market.

Legal authority to operate and operational capability are two different things. The concession establishes that a company may lawfully provide security services. Whether it can provide them to the standard required by an international corporate client remains a matter for procurement, due diligence and ongoing contract management.

Not every officer has the same status

Another area where assumptions based on the UK market can be misleading is the status of individual security personnel.

Polish law distinguishes between personnel entered on the statutory list of qualified physical security personnel maintained by the Police and staff carrying out duties for which such an entry is not required. This is not a Polish version of the UK’s individual SIA licensing model. Certain duties — including close protection and some activities involving firearms or the use of force — require appropriately qualified personnel. Many routine guarding functions, however, can be carried out by security staff who are not entered on the qualified list.

Equally, the absence of an entry does not mean that an individual operates entirely outside a statutory framework or has no powers in defined circumstances. The Polish system simply does not map neatly onto a British licensed/unlicensed distinction.

For the client, the practical consequence is straightforward. The number of officers assigned to a site tells only part of the story. The more relevant questions are who is carrying out each function, what legal status and qualifications they hold, what training they have received and whether their competence matches the risks and responsibilities attached to the post. Those questions are becoming more important as recruitment becomes increasingly difficult.

Recruitment is becoming harder

In PZPO’s 2025 industry survey, 90 per cent of respondents described recruitment as difficult or very difficult. Employers also reported increasing pay expectations and persistent problems finding candidates with the required qualifications and experience. The survey covered representatives of security businesses, most of them members of the organisation conducting the research, so it should not be treated as a complete statistical picture of the Polish market. The direction of travel is nevertheless difficult to ignore.

From 1 January 2026, Poland’s statutory minimum wage is PLN 4,806 gross per month, while the minimum hourly rate applying to relevant civil-law contracts is PLN 31.40. At the time of writing, the Polish Government’s draft rates for 2027 are PLN 4,950 per month and PLN 32.30 per hour. In guarding, however, the statutory minimum is increasingly just that — a legal reference point. In many locations it is no longer sufficient to recruit and retain suitable personnel.

The sector competes for staff with logistics, manufacturing, warehousing and other employers. If a candidate can earn a comparable amount closer to home, on a more attractive shift pattern or with less responsibility, security work becomes a less compelling choice. This pressure is reshaping the market. Rising wages increase the cost of guarding, while clients remain reluctant to allow security budgets to grow indefinitely. The discussion consequently moves away from simply negotiating the hourly rate.

Which posts are genuinely necessary? Which functions still require a person to be physically present? Which activities can be automated, monitored remotely or organised differently? PZPO’s research reflects the same tension. Three-quarters of respondents expected labour costs to continue rising, while around 63 per cent reported client pressure to reduce costs. Providers were simultaneously being asked to maintain service quality, preserve staffing levels and introduce greater automation.

Those objectives are increasingly difficult to reconcile within a model built predominantly around large volumes of guarding hours.

From CCTV to hybrid security

The growth of security technology in Poland has a practical economic driver.

Traditional CCTV solves only part of the problem. Adding more cameras without changing how information is assessed can simply create more material for the same operator to monitor. Video analytics changes that model by identifying events that warrant human attention — for example, a person entering a restricted area, a vehicle crossing a defined boundary or movement within a protected perimeter. The operator’s role shifts from continuously searching multiple screens to verifying and assessing events identified by the system.

In PZPO’s 2024 survey, 77 per cent of respondents said they had increased spending on modern technological solutions. Subsequent industry research has continued to identify monitoring, analytics and further technological investment as important areas of market development. At site level, this can reduce some routine patrol activity, enable remote verification of alarms and allow response resources to be deployed more selectively.

A genuine incident still requires human assessment, decision-making, escalation and communication with the client, emergency services or other stakeholders. A well-designed hybrid security model therefore uses technology for tasks it can perform consistently while retaining people where judgement, communication and the ability to act create operational value.

One large provider does not always need to do everything

The Polish market offers clients a choice between large national operators, regional providers and smaller companies specialising in particular security disciplines.

Large providers have clear advantages. For organisations with multiple locations, they can simplify administration, reporting and contract management. Scale may also provide greater capacity when mobilising substantial numbers of personnel or arranging relief cover across a large portfolio. That does not mean the same provider will necessarily be the strongest option in every security discipline.

Running continuous guarding at an industrial facility, designing an advanced video analytics solution, providing executive protection and securing a high-profile event are different activities requiring different capabilities. In a specialist field, a smaller provider that has concentrated on one discipline for years may offer greater depth than a service delivered as an additional workstream within a large national contract.

The relevant issue is whether the capability being purchased actually exists within the delivery model. This becomes particularly important where subcontracting is involved. Subcontracting may be entirely appropriate where specialist expertise, technology or local resources are required. The problem arises when the client assumes that the company signing the agreement will also deliver every element of the contract using its own personnel and capabilities.

The client should know who is actually delivering each element of the service, how subcontractors are selected and supervised, where operational responsibility sits and who remains accountable when performance fails. The name on the contract and the capability of the team arriving at the site are not necessarily the same thing.

What should an international client actually look for?

For an international organisation, provider due diligence should go beyond confirming that the company holds the required concession and can supply the requested number of officers.

The first question is whether the proposed operating model is sustainable. Workforce turnover, absence management, relief staffing and the ability to maintain required competence levels matter as much as nominal headcount. The client should also examine how personnel are selected, trained and supervised for the specific functions they will perform. Generic security experience is not automatically the same as competence for a particular corporate, industrial or high-risk environment.

The complete delivery chain matters as well. Where subcontractors are involved, their role, competence and accountability should be visible rather than hidden several layers below the prime contract. Technology requires the same scrutiny. Installing additional cameras, analytics or access-control systems does not in itself create a stronger security model. What matters is how detection, verification, decision-making, escalation and response connect to one another.

Contract governance is equally important. Reporting standards, escalation routes, performance indicators, incident review and the ability to modify the operating model should be built into the relationship from the outset. For multi-site organisations, one further question is worth asking: does national-level contract governance translate into consistent local performance?

Fewer people, higher expectations

As technology takes over more routine functions, the skills that are difficult to automate become more important.

Security officers are increasingly expected to operate technical systems, understand client procedures, report incidents properly and make sensible decisions in situations that cannot be fully anticipated in written instructions. Within an international organisation, English-language capability and the ability to operate within the client’s corporate culture may also become important parts of service delivery.

This is particularly relevant for British and other multinational companies. The security standard may be consistent across London, Warsaw and Prague, but the local delivery model does not have to be identical in each location. Trying to reproduce the same manpower structure everywhere may be less effective than defining the required security outcomes and designing the local model around them.

Not every security officer needs to become a security analyst. It is becoming increasingly difficult, however, to justify a model in which most of the value comes from large numbers of low-paid personnel performing predictable tasks that technology can increasingly support or automate. As the routine workload changes, the quality of the people who remain matters more.

A more demanding security environment

The guarding market is also changing at a time when security has assumed greater strategic significance in Poland. Poland remains a stable environment in which to do business, but since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the country has operated under a sustained level of heightened security readiness.

The second BRAVO alert level has applied across Poland continuously since 16 April 2022 and has been repeatedly extended. It is currently scheduled to remain in force until 30 November 2026. Since November 2025, the higher third CHARLIE level has also applied to specified parts of the country’s railway infrastructure and has likewise been extended until the end of November 2026.

This should not be interpreted as meaning that Poland has become an unsafe environment for international business. The alert levels are primarily mechanisms for increasing the preparedness of government bodies, public institutions and security services. What matters is their duration. A heightened level of readiness has now been maintained for more than four years and can no longer be treated purely as a short-term response to a single event.

There are also more tangible examples of the changing threat environment. In 2026, Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment against members of a group alleged to have carried out acts of sabotage and offences classified by Polish prosecutors as terrorist in nature on behalf of Russian intelligence.

The case includes the burning of an OBI DIY store in Warsaw, an IKEA store in Vilnius, the fire at Warsaw’s Marywilska 44 shopping centre and preparations for a further arson attack in Riga. In a separate case, prosecutors charged individuals in connection with parcels containing incendiary and explosive devices. One ignited at a DHL hub at Leipzig Airport and another at a DHL facility at Birmingham Airport. According to the Polish prosecution authorities, those activities were also carried out on behalf of Russian intelligence.

For corporate security teams, one of the most relevant features of these cases is the nature of the environments involved. They were not limited to military installations, government buildings or traditional critical infrastructure. Retail sites, shopping centres, logistics operations and supply chains all appear in the cases — environments immediately familiar to international businesses.

This broadens the context in which protection of commercial sites needs to be considered. Threat assessment can no longer focus exclusively on conventional crime, unauthorised access, theft or workplace incidents. It also needs to recognise that ordinary commercial assets may become relevant within a wider geopolitical or hybrid threat environment.

Looking beyond the current threat

The current geopolitical situation is important, but a corporate security model should not be designed on the assumption that today’s threat picture will remain unchanged.

The regional security environment will continue to evolve through developments in the war in Ukraine, shifts in state activity, new methods of interference and developments that cannot necessarily be predicted from today’s perspective. For businesses, attempting to forecast one specific future threat is less useful than ensuring that the security architecture can adapt when the assumptions on which it was designed begin to change.

This is fundamentally a resilience issue: a mature security model should be capable of adjusting protective measures without requiring the entire system to be rebuilt. A change in threat level may require different monitoring rules, revised access controls, additional patrols, stronger supervision, changes to staffing, greater use of remote verification or new escalation procedures.

The same principle extends beyond physical protection. Incident management, crisis communication, business continuity, supplier dependencies and liaison with public authorities all contribute to an organisation’s ability to respond when the external environment changes. Threat assessment therefore needs to be treated as an ongoing process rather than a document produced once and left largely unchanged.

Strategic developments should be reviewed against site-level vulnerabilities, business-critical processes and the consequences of disruption. Security measures can then be adjusted when relevant indicators change, rather than only after an incident exposes a weakness. For senior management, the most useful question is not which particular future scenario will occur. It is whether the organisation can recognise a material change in its risk environment early enough and adapt before that change becomes an operational problem.

From buying hours to designing security

The most important change taking place in Poland’s private security market is not a single piece of technology or one regulatory development. It is a change in the economics and design of the service.

Suitable personnel are harder to recruit, labour costs are rising and clients want expenditure to remain under control. Technology can reduce the need for some routine static functions, but where people remain necessary, their competence matters more. At the same time, the external security environment has become more complex. Against that background, designing an entire security operation around the hourly cost of a security officer makes progressively less sense.

Traditional guarding will remain important. At many sites it will continue to form the backbone of the security operation. Its effectiveness, however, will increasingly depend on how well it is integrated with technology, procedures, effective management, threat assessment and appropriately selected personnel. For an international organisation operating in Poland, the implication is not that the Polish market requires an entirely different security philosophy. It requires an understanding of the local market before deciding how corporate security standards should be delivered within it.

Poland has a large, developed and competitive private security sector. Clients can choose between major national operators, regional companies and smaller providers with highly specialised capabilities. Regulatory compliance is the starting point. On its own, it says relatively little about the quality of the service that will ultimately be delivered.

The question is therefore becoming less about how many people can be placed on a site. It is increasingly about whether the security system as a whole can identify a problem early enough, make the right decision and respond effectively.

Original publication: The original version of this article was prepared by Global Protection Group for Professional Security Magazine and published at professionalsecurity.co.uk/news/interviews/polands-private-security-market/.