How To Start A Security Company in Colorado (2026 Guide)

Colorado is not a light-touch licensing state. The Division of Professions and Occupations at DORA regulates forty-one occupations, from radon mitigators and passenger tramway operators to barbers, outfitters and combative sports. The apparatus exists, it is well funded, and it has never taken an interest in private security.

Nor is this a case of a legislature that simply never got round to it. Colorado did license private investigators, and then stopped: Title 12, Article 160 of the Colorado Revised Statutes was repealed under its own sunset clause on 21 September 2020. The state now licenses neither the people who guard property nor the people who investigate what happened to it.

Which leaves the real rulebook in one city. Denver's Article V reads far more like a state scheme than a business permit — training hours, FBI fingerprint checks, uniform approval, a firearms authorization signed by the chief of police. If Denver is anywhere in your plan, that ordinance is your licensing law.

The whole path, in order

Two steps set the schedule. Neither is a state filing, and both start with a map rather than a form.

1. 1

   Map your posts against city boundaries

   3–5 days

   Blocks everything downstream — start it early

   Denver is the only Colorado city running a full private security code. Colorado Springs licenses individual private security officers through the City Clerk. Aurora lists liquor, contractor, small cell, fiber, tobacco and marijuana licences and no security category; Lakewood's code mentions security only inside its marijuana chapters. Where your first contract sits decides everything below.

2. 2

   File with the Colorado Secretary of State

   1–3 days

   Articles of organization or incorporation are $50 online and Colorado processes them immediately — this is one of the fastest formation states in the country. The $25 periodic report then falls due every year in your anniversary window, with a $50 penalty behind it.

3. 3

   Bind cover and open workers' compensation

   1–2 weeks

   Denver's Section 42-138 names three categories — workers' compensation and employers' liability, commercial general liability, and auto liability if you run vehicles — but sets the amounts by direction of the licensing director rather than in the ordinance. Colorado workers' comp attaches at your first employee, part-time and family included.

4. 4

   File the Denver private security employer application

   2–4 weeks

   Blocks everything downstream — start it early

   Section 42-133 wants the operating name, the principal place of business, every principal and managing agent, a description of the specific services you will sell, and photographs of the vehicles and uniforms you intend to use. Nothing about experience hours — Denver never adopted a qualifying-manager test.

5. 5

   Licence each officer individually

   3–6 weeks

   Every guard files their own application with an FBI fingerprint check, a sixteen-hour training certificate, a five-year employment history and a medical certification. The check and the certificate must each be under sixty days old on the filing date, which is the detail that derails hiring pushes.

6. 6

   Get the uniform approved, settle the armed posts

   2–3 weeks

   Uniforms must be presented to the director for approval before any licensee wears them. Armed officers need written authorization from the chief of police, proof of proficiency and a minimum age of twenty-one, and the authorization is annotated on the licence card as a firearm endorsement.

7. 7

   Open along the Front Range

   Ongoing

   Four in five Coloradans live between Fort Collins and Pueblo on the I-25 corridor, and the buyers there are cannabis operators, hospital systems, data centres and construction sites. Denver-licensed officers are the credential that lets you bid the top of that market.

Step 1: Work Out Whether Denver Is On Your Map

Everything about a Colorado launch turns on this one question, because the state layer is genuinely empty and the municipal layer is genuinely not.

The state layer really is empty

No agency to write to, no application to queue behind, no exam, no experience requirement, no guard card, no registry of licensed companies, no statewide training minimum. The 2020 repeal also removed the last adjacent licence a security operator might have been caught by.

Denver's Article V catches more than contract guards

Read the definition before you assume it does not apply to you. A private security employer is anyone providing guard services to another party on a contractual basis — and also anyone who "utilizes its own employees to provide security services for the employer or the employer's premises." In-house teams at a Denver dispensary, arena or distribution centre are inside the ordinance, not outside it, and their staff need individual guard licences exactly as a contractor's would.

Step 2: Form Your Legal Business Entity

With no licence tied to your legal form, entity choice is a pure liability and tax question. Most Colorado guard companies land on an LLC taxed as an S corporation; a corporation makes more sense once outside investment or multi-state work is realistic.

What Colorado actually charges

Filing is $50 online for articles of organization or incorporation, and the state files them the moment you submit. The recurring obligation is the periodic report at $25 a year, with a $50 late-filing penalty and administrative dissolution behind that. Operators who also work north of the line should read the Wyoming guide before choosing where the parent entity sits — the two states treat this trade very differently.

Step 3: Insure the Business Colorado Will Not Inspect

This is the section that replaces licensing everywhere outside Denver, and it deserves the room.

Colorado publishes no minimum general liability figure and imposes no surety bond. Denver names the categories but not the numbers: Section 42-138 requires workers' compensation and employers' liability, commercial general liability, and auto liability where vehicles are used, "in amounts as required by the director." Ask the department for the current figures in writing before you buy, because the ordinance will not tell you.

Workers' compensation is the one bright line. Colorado requires it of every employer with employees, regardless of headcount, part-time status or family relationship.

Step 4: Apply for the Denver Private Security Employer Licence

The employer application is administrative rather than technical, which fools people into rushing it.

Key tips for your application

Describe the services narrowly and accurately, because that description binds what you may sell. Photograph the vehicles and uniforms you actually intend to deploy. Name every principal and managing agent — omissions surface at renewal. And diarise the expiry the day the licence arrives: Article V licences run a flat year from issuance, not to a calendar year end, and working past the printed date is its own offence.

What it actually costs

Colorado charges nothing for the right to run a security company. Denver charges by headcount, and the per-officer fees are what accumulate.

Step 5: Uniforms, Vehicles and the Armed Question

Denver is one of the few places in the interior west that approves what your officers wear. Uniforms go to the director before use, and the outer garment must prominently display a badge or patch reading "security," "private security," "security guard," or "guard" — so that nobody mistakes your officer for a Denver police officer. Vehicles are described and photographed in the same application.

Firearms sit outside the licence entirely. Carrying while performing security services without specific authorization from the chief of police is an unlawful act under Section 42-140, concealed carry additionally requires a valid permit, and authorization starts at age twenty-one. Denver's building rules reflect this: firearms are barred from city facilities except, among others, for a person "licensed by the city as a security guard with a firearms endorsement and acting in performance of their duties."

Step 6: Go Live Across the Front Range

Colorado is four buying markets stacked along one interstate.

• Denver and the inner suburbs hold the licensed work: stadiums, dispensaries, transit, hospitals and downtown property management, all of which ask for licence numbers.
• Colorado Springs runs on defence contractors, Fort Carson-adjacent logistics and a large hospital system, with its own private security officer licence through the City Clerk.
• Aurora, Lakewood, Thornton and Westminster are unlicensed suburban markets where you compete on documentation instead.
• The Western Slope and resort corridor buy seasonally, with event and construction peaks unlike anything on the Front Range.

Step 7: Build Smart, Not Fast

Where no licence filters entrants, the filter becomes your paperwork. In Denver you are already producing training certificates, background checks and insurance certificates for the city; keep them in a form a client can audit and you are ahead of most of the market before you quote.

Get the employment side right early. Our security guard labor law guide is written to California's stricter rules, but the overtime and time-record mechanics transfer intact. Operators expanding west into Utah or south into New Mexico meet a genuine state licensing board for the first time, so building to a documented standard now saves rebuilding later.

Your launch checklist

Work down this in order. Ticks are stored in this browser, so you can leave and come back to it.

Bonus: Use Technology to Stay Compliant and Professional

Denver already forces you to keep files on training, background checks and insurance, and renewal asks for affidavits about which officers are licensed. A spreadsheet works until the tenth guard. A platform such as Safetrac holds licence and expiry dates against each officer, geotags every checkpoint, and turns shift notes into reports a property manager will actually open — the same evidence base that answers a renewal query and a client dispute. The pricing page sets out what it costs.

Final Thoughts

Colorado rewards operators who read the map before the statute book. The state has decided, deliberately and twice over, not to regulate this trade — and one city has decided the opposite with unusual thoroughness.

That asymmetry is the opportunity. Anyone can trade in Aurora next week; comparatively few bother to run the Denver process properly, keep sixteen-hour certificates current, and renew on the anniversary instead of the calendar. Doing so buys you the contracts that ask for a licence number, and it builds the documentation habit that the rest of the Front Range will eventually demand anyway.

Resources & Links:

• Denver Revised Municipal Code, Chapter 42, Article V
• DRMC section 32-95 — security guard and private security employer fees
• C.R.S. Title 12, Article 160 — repealed 21 September 2020
• Colorado Secretary of State — business filing fees
• Colorado Division of Workers' Compensation