Licensed security companies in Hong Kong

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Licensed security companies in Hong Kong

Before a building hires guards, or anyone hires a cash-in-transit service or an alarm installer, it is worth knowing whether the company is licensed. In Hong Kong a company that supplies people to do security work for others for reward needs a security company licence from the Security and Guarding Services Industry Authority. This page lists all 1,463 licences, held by 1,448 companies, on the Authority’s published list: search by name or licence number, or browse by district.

What a security company licence is

The Security and Guarding Services Industry Authority is a statutory body established under the Security and Guarding Services Ordinance (Cap. 460) to regulate the security industry: it sets the criteria and conditions for security company licences and decides applications. The Authority says every company that supplies individuals to do security work for another person for reward must hold a valid licence, and that anyone else who supplies, agrees to supply or holds himself out as supplying an individual to do security work for another person for reward commits an offence under the Ordinance.

A licence covers one or more of the three types of security work the Authority defines:

• Type I: Provision of security guarding services
• Type II: Provision of armoured transportation services
• Type III: Installation, maintenance and/or repairing of a security device and/or designing (for any particular premises or place) a security system incorporating a security device

According to the Authority, a licence is normally valid for five years and the licensee pays a prescribed annual fee each year; failing to pay leads automatically to revocation of the licence on the day after the due date. Since 1 July 2023 licences have been issued in electronic form.

How to check a security company

1. Search for the company on the Authority’s list of licensed security companies, which the Authority updates daily.
2. Compare the licence number, company name, address and types of security work with what the company gave you.
3. For an electronic licence, scan its QR code on the Authority’s e-licence verification page to see its conditions and validity.

The open-data copy of the list is updated monthly and this site copies it weekly, so a licence granted, renewed or revoked in the meantime may not show here yet: the Authority’s list is the authority. The Authority’s questions and answers on security company licences have the details.

What is on the list

To protect privacy, this site never shows the name of a natural person. Companies, partnerships, firms and trade names are listed under their names, a sole proprietor under the trading name only, and a name that on its own reads as a person’s is not shown. An entry whose name is a person’s is counted but not named, and so is one whose name seems to contain a person’s full name until it has been reviewed; neither has a page of its own.

Licensed security companies by district

An entry belongs to the district its address is in: the point the CSDI portal’s geotagged copy of the list gives for its licence number, inside the Home Affairs Department’s district boundary; an entry without a point is placed from its address. Each district page lists every entry there.

💡 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Hong Kong business registers · the Authority’s list of licensed security companies