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Checking a guard or a security company in Maine

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 Maine, and walks you to Maine State Police, Special Investigations Unit’s own records to confirm it.

tessura is not a Maine 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 Maine requirements, training hours, and application steps →

Check the guard

Maine licenses security companies but not individual guards, so there is no officer record to check.

How to check it

  1. Do not ask the guard for a Maine guard licence — none exists. Ask instead which licensed contract security company employs them, and get that company's name exactly as registered.
  2. Open the Maine State Police list of Active Contract Security Companies (https://www.maine.gov/dps/msp/sites/maine.gov.dps.msp/files/concealed/ActiveContractSecurityCo.pdf) and find the company by name; it is a dated PDF roster, not a search box, so use your PDF reader's find function and check the date at the top of the file is recent.
  3. Ask the company, in writing, to confirm that it notified the Commissioner of this employee before they began security guard work and that it completed the § 9410-A background investigation — Maine law requires both, and requires the signed statement to be filed before the employee may carry a firearm or work a labour dispute.
  4. If you want independent confirmation, cite 32 M.R.S. § 9418 when you contact the Special Investigations Unit: it obliges the Commissioner to supply, on specific request, the names and current addresses of guards employed by a licensed contract security company.
  5. Check that the company's own entry is on the current active list and that nothing about the guard's assignment falls outside it — in-house 'proprietary' security staff are exempt from the company licence entirely under § 9404(2)(A), so no roster will cover them.
Why there is no link to click

Maine licenses CONTRACT SECURITY COMPANIES only and issues no individual guard licence or card. 32 M.R.S. § 9410-A sets minimum qualifications a person must meet and requires the licensed company to notify the Commissioner of each guard and complete a background investigation within 60 days — but nothing is issued to the guard and nothing is published about them. WRONG-DATABASE TRAP: the Maine State Police publishes two prominent PDFs, Licensed Professional Investigators and Active Contract Security Companies. The first is individuals but they are investigators, not guards; the second is guards' employers but they are companies, not people. Neither will ever contain the guard standing in front of you.

Maine State Police licensing unit: (207) 624-7210, msp.wplu@maine.gov. For an individual guard, make the request under 32 M.R.S. § 9418.

Check the company

Maine State Police, Special Investigations Unit licenses the firm itself here. This is the check most people skip, and it is usually the more important of the two.

What the firm must holdContract Security Company LicenseIssued by Maine State Police, Special Investigations Unit

How to check it

  1. Ask the company for the exact legal name on its licence and its Contract Security Company License number. A company that cannot produce a number for a licence it claims to hold has told you something.
  2. Open the Maine State Police, Special Investigations Unit lookup and search for that name.
  3. Search the legal name, not the name on the uniform or the invoice. Brand names, DBAs, and the name on the truck are often not the licensed entity.
  4. Read the status and the expiry date, not just the presence of a record. An expired or suspended licence still returns a result.
  5. If nothing comes up, ask which entity holds the licence and in which state, then check that name. If the answer does not resolve, treat the licence as unconfirmed and call Maine State Police, Special Investigations Unit before signing.
Open the Maine State Police, Special Investigations Unit lookup →

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.

Maine does not require it

Maine imposes no insurance requirement on contract security companies. Chapter 93 contains no liability provision at all — the bond is the only instrument the state asks for.

What that means for you: the licence tells you nothing about whether this company is insured, so the certificate is a purely commercial document with no regulator standing behind it. Everything below matters more here than almost anywhere else.

Bond: $10,000 for a Maine resident, $50,000 for a non-resident, given to the Commissioner of Public Safety on a prescribed form and conditioned on honest conduct, with a direct right of action for anyone injured by an intentional, knowing, reckless or negligent act.

The Commissioner holds the bond and only sends the form after conditional approval, so the state controls the instrument — but §9409 imposes no surety notification duty and no notice period. Nobody is told if the bond is cancelled mid-term.

If it lapses: No automatic suspension. Failure to comply with the chapter is a revocation ground; practical detectability of a bond lapse is close to zero.

32 M.R.S.A. ch. 93 (no insurance provision) — https://www.mainelegislature.org/LEGIS/STATUTES/32/title32ch93.pdf

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

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

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