Saudi security staff: documents to check

Saudi Arabia’s private security companies guard malls, hotels, banks, hospitals, compounds and events, and in 2025 the Ministry of Interior widened the list of premises that must have guards, some of them around the clock. Field service and facilities contractors face similar questions from their clients. The documents are familiar to every operations manager; the hard part is keeping them complete, verified and in date for hundreds of people across several cities.

The regulatory picture

Guarding is governed by the Law of Private Security Services, issued by Royal Decree M/24 in 1426H, and its implementing regulations. Since amendments in 2022, the Minister of Interior, or whoever he delegates, licenses security companies, and the 2025 regulations name Public Security as the licensing authority. Guarding industrial and petroleum facilities needs a licence from the High Commission for Industrial Security.

The work is reserved for Saudis. A security company must be owned by Saudi nationals and everyone it employs must be Saudi; breaches can cost a company its licence. Clients add their own conditions: banks must hold guarding contractors to rules set by the Saudi Central Bank. Check your own licence and each client contract; together they set the minimum for what you hold on file.

The documents to check

National ID or iqama

Saudi staff hold a national ID card. Non-Saudi staff hold an iqama, the residence permit, which employers renew through the Ministry of Interior’s Absher Business and Muqeem platforms and pay for. Record the number and expiry date and keep a scan, never the original: a worker’s passport or residence permit may not be withheld. In a security company everyone is Saudi, so iqamas matter mostly to field service and facilities contractors.

Contract and work permit

Every employment contract, for Saudi and non-Saudi staff alike, must be written on the unified form and documented on Qiwa, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development’s platform. Non-Saudi staff also need a work permit, issued and renewed through Qiwa, and may only work in the profession it names. Record the permit’s expiry and profession, and roster each person only to work that matches it.

Good conduct certificate

A criminal record certificate from the Ministry of Interior, often called a good conduct certificate, is the background check to ask for before deployment. An employer can request one through the ministry’s Amen portal, and the person approves the request in Absher. Record the date of issue, decide how often you’ll ask for a fresh one, and check what each client expects.

Security guard licence

Each guard needs a civil security guard licence. The fee schedule added to the law in 2022 makes it valid for one year. Record its number and expiry, and make it a requirement of every guarding post so an unlicensed guard can’t be posted there. Check what training the licence calls for and what your clients expect, and keep the certificates with the licence.

Professional registration

For engineering and technical work, professional accreditation from the Saudi Council of Engineers is required to practise, and it covers technicians in supporting disciplines as well as engineers. Treat it like a licence: number, dates, and a scan on file.

Pay records

Separately, the labour ministry’s guide for employers and workers lists registering each worker with the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI), providing medical insurance, and paying wages through the Wage Protection Program. These belong in your payroll process. What a rostering system should give payroll is a clean record of approved hours for the month.

Attendance that clients believe

Paper registers at the gate are easy to fill in after the fact. A clock-in on the guard’s phone, checked against the post’s location, gives a record with a time and a place that a client can trust, and a missed clock-in alerts the supervisor while there’s still time to send someone. It needs an Android phone with location and a data connection at the moment of clock-in.

A routine that keeps records current

1. Create each record with the ID or iqama, the Qiwa contract and the good conduct certificate before deployment.
2. Verify each document and mark it verified; an unverified document doesn’t count.
3. Mark which documents each site requires, especially the guard licence for guarding posts.
4. Warn staff and their supervisors before anything expires, guard licences and iqamas above all.
5. Let staff send in renewed documents with a photo from their phone, instead of bringing them to the office.
6. Download the licences report before each client audit.

TDS Workforce Management has the iqama, Qiwa work permit, good conduct certificate, Saudi Council of Engineers registration and security guard licence built in, alongside photo ID and other general checks, and it only accepts an iqama number of 10 digits starting with 2. Expiry warnings go out 30, 14 and 7 days ahead, and a site that requires a licence refuses anyone without it at the roster, at publish and at clock-in. Read how licence tracking works, or how TDS Workforce Management fits security companies.