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Checking a guard or a security company in Minnesota

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 Minnesota, and walks you to Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services’s own records to confirm it.

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

Check the guard

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

What they should hold

Every guard working a postProtective Agent Employee Pre-assignment Training Certificate (PPA, 12 hr)12 hrs of training
If they carry a firearmInitial Armed Training Certificate (IA, 6 hr) + annual Continuing Armed Training6 hrs of training

Armed work: Armed guards need employer authorization plus firearms training that satisfies Minnesota's use-of-force training rules; permits to carry are issued by county sheriffs.

How to check it

  1. Do not ask for a Minnesota guard licence — employees of a licensed protective agent are not licensed. Ask instead for the employer's legal name, DBA and city.
  2. Open the PDB License Search linked from the Minnesota DPS 'License holders' page (https://pdb-licenseholders.netlify.app/) and type the company name or DBA into the single search box.
  3. Check the row that comes back: the License Type must be Protective Agent (Private Detective is a different service), the DBA should match the name on the uniforms and invoice, and note the Next Reissuance Date — that is the renewal marker this tool shows in place of an expiry.
  4. Ask each guard on site for the employer-issued identification card that Minn. Stat. § 326.336 subd. 2 requires them to carry at all times and present on request. It must show the licence holder's name and Minnesota address, the employee's photograph and physical description, and be signed by both the employee and the licence holder or qualified representative.
  5. Ask the agency to confirm the guard is past conditional employment — under § 326.336 a new hire may not work as a protective agent until the BCA criminal record report comes back clean, only be trained.
  6. If the company name does not resolve cleanly in the search, contact the Board before the guard starts.
Careful: the obvious lookup is not a guard lookup

Minnesota licenses the protective agent BUSINESS, not the guard. A licence holder 'may employ as many unlicensed persons as may be necessary' (Minn. Stat. § 326.336); employees carry an employer-issued ID card, not a state one. WRONG-DATABASE TRAP: the PDB search looks like a name search and accepts a person's name, but the Minnesota House Research Department warns in its own publication that because most protective agents are LLCs or LLPs, 'running a name search in the board's licensee database may not inform the individual searching the database whether the named person has a protective agent license' unless that person happens to be the sole proprietor, qualified representative or Minnesota manager. Searching a working guard's name will almost always return nothing. Separately, a 'proprietary employer' using guards solely on its own property needs no licence at all, so in-house guards will not appear anywhere.

Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services, 1600 University Ave. Suite 200, St. Paul MN 55104: 651-355-0800, mn.pdb@state.mn.us.

PDB License Search — searches the employer, not the guard →

If the lookup finds nothing: Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services, 1600 University Ave. Suite 200, St. Paul MN 55104: 651-355-0800, mn.pdb@state.mn.us.

Check the company

Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services 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 holdProtective Agent LicenseIssued by Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services

How to check it

  1. Ask the company for the exact legal name on its licence and its Protective Agent License number. A company that cannot produce a number for a licence it claims to hold has told you something.
  2. Open the Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services 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 Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services before signing.
Open the Minnesota Board of Private Detective and Protective Agent Services 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.

Minnesota does not require it

Insurance is one of two ways to prove financial responsibility. A protective agent may file an insurance certificate covering general liability, completed operations and personal injury (false arrest, defamation, wrongful entry) with NO dollar minimum stated — or instead file an annual CPA-signed net worth statement, from $10,000 with no employees up to $100,000 at 51 or more.

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 surety bond running to the State of Minnesota, filed with the board, covering faithful observance of law and damages from any wilful and malicious wrong. Mandatory and separate from the financial-responsibility election.

Express insurer duty, and an unusual one: on a policy cancellation "the insurer will send notice to the board at the same time" it receives a cancellation request from or sends notice to the insured. Simultaneous rather than advance — no warning window, but no blind spot either. Minnesota also declares by statute that WHICH requirement a licensee complied with is public data.

If it lapses: The two-year licence is effective only while the holder complies with the chapter, exposing a lapse to revocation. No automatic-suspension clause.

Minn. Stat. §326.3382 subd.3 — https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/326.3382

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

Minnesota requirements last reviewed September 17, 2026. Rules change — the regulator’s page is authoritative if it disagrees with ours.

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