Checking a guard or a security company in Colorado

This page is for whoever is doing the checking — a client, a property manager, a company vetting a subcontractor. It tells you what a guard and a guard company are supposed to hold in Colorado, and walks you to the regulator’s own records to confirm it.

tessura is not a Colorado agency and issues nothing. Every link below goes to the regulator, and the regulator’s answer is the one that counts.

Getting licensed yourself instead? The Colorado requirements, training hours, and application steps →

Check the guard

Colorado has no statewide guard licence, so what a guard needs depends on the city or county.

How to check it

Do not look for a Colorado state guard licence — there is none. Instead, ask which city the guard will actually be working in, because that city's rules are the only ones that apply.
For work inside Denver, ask the guard for their Denver security guard licence and ask the company for its Denver private security employer licence, then verify both through Denver Business Licensing (denvergov.org → Business Licensing → Security services). Denver licences expire annually.
For work in another Colorado municipality, call that city's clerk or business-licensing office and ask whether security guards are licensed there and how to verify one; several front-range cities license guards and many do not.
Because there is no state floor to fall back on, ask the company in writing for the guard's background-check date, training records and proof of liability insurance, and confirm any municipal licence you are given is current and its expiry date is in the future.

Why there is no link to click

Colorado has no statewide guard licence and no state security regulator, so there is no state record to search. Ignore anything you read about this changing: HB25-1262 would have created a State Board of Private Security Services and required individual licences from 1 August 2026, but it was postponed indefinitely by the House Finance Committee on 7 April 2025 and never took effect. Articles written before that date are still circulating. Licensing is municipal — Denver licenses individual guards and reports roughly 7,000 of them, with separate armed, plainclothes and canine endorsements, and Colorado Springs licenses Private Security Officers through the City Clerk. Aurora and most other cities do not.

Denver Business Licensing (the largest Colorado guard-licensing jurisdiction): https://denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Business-Licensing/Business-licenses/Security-services — Denver 311 (720-913-1311). For confirmation that no state credential exists, DORA's Division of Professions and Occupations lookup is at https://apps2.colorado.gov/dora/licensing/Lookup/LicenseLookup.aspx

Check the company

Colorado does not license security companies at the state level, so there is no company licence to check. That is a fact about the state, not a mark against any firm.

Colorado has no state licence for guard companies — its published list of all 344 state licence types contains no security, guard or patrol category, and the private investigator licence sunset in 2020. Denver and Colorado Springs license guard employers municipally; Denver publishes 308 of them as open data.

With no licence to check, lean harder on the things that do exist: the guard credentials above, insurance, workers’ compensation, and a business registration in good standing with the Colorado Secretary of State.

Ask for insurance properly

A licence says the state let them operate. Insurance is what stands between you and a claim, and it is the easier of the two to fake — a certificate is only true on the day it was printed.

A certificate of insurance (COI) that names your business as an additional insured, not just the certificate holderCertificate holder means you were mailed a copy. Additional insured means their policy actually answers for you if you are pulled into a claim.

General liability, and workers’ compensation at your state’s statutory limitsIf a guard is hurt on your property and the company carries no workers’ comp, the claim tends to land on you. Ask for commercial auto too if they run patrol vehicles.

The policy number and the effective and expiry dates, on a certificate dated within the last monthAn undated or months-old certificate is the single most common tell. The dates let you ask the insurer about the right policy.

The name, agency, and direct phone number of the broker who issued it — then call themThe broker can confirm the policy is in force today. The certificate PDF cannot, and a forged or stale one looks identical to a real one.

A contract term requiring written notice to you before the policy is cancelled or non-renewedStandard certificates promise notice to the insured, not to you. Putting the duty on the company in the contract is what makes a mid-term cancellation a breach.

A fresh certificate part-way through the term, not only at signingRe-asking at 60 or 90 days costs you an email and defeats the whole get-the-COI-then-drop-it pattern.

tessura does not verify anyone’s insurance and has no access to insurers’ records. This is guidance for doing it yourself, not a statement about any company on this site. It is also not legal advice — for a contract of any size, have your own counsel or broker set the limits.

Where this comes from

Colorado requirements last reviewed August 28, 2026. Rules change — the regulator’s page is authoritative if it disagrees with ours.

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