Michael Gstach

Group CIO & CISO

Designa Axess Industries Holding

Michael Gstach is Group CIO and CISO of Designa Axess Industries Holding, a technology group and international provider of access, visitor and guest management solutions - for ski resorts, stadiums, exhibition centres, amusement parks and museums - and of digital parking-management solutions for airports, cities, hospitals and shopping centres, with more than 1,200 employees in over 20 countries and customers in more than 50. He runs the operator's side of critical infrastructure - access, parking, ticketing - where an outage isn't a ticket in a queue but a person who doesn't get through, right now.

For more than 20 years he has led IT organisations through turnarounds - at SPAR, RX and the Dr. Richard Group, and today across the DAIH group, which he formed from fragmented local IT units into one global group IT (including ISO 27001 certification) within his first year. He describes himself as an "IT lobbyist": his job is to give people a stage, not to make himself indispensable. He is a Confare ImpactAward 2026 nominee - nominated not by a boss, but by someone he once helped become a CIO.

On stage he is the CIO who asks the uncomfortable question - including about his own hard-earned lessons.