Vetting Security Personnel: The Checks That Actually Matter

Security staff get access that almost no other contractor gets: your buildings, your schedules, your family, your travel plans, your executives' movements. Vetting is not paperwork. It is the control that makes everything else safe, and most organisations do less of it than they think.

Start with identity and right to work

Check original documents, not scans. Confirm the name matches the licence, the references and the bank details. Identity fraud in staffing is most often caught here, at the very first step, or never.

Verify licences at source

Do not accept a photograph of a licence card. Check the number against the regulator's public register, confirm the category matches the role, and diary the expiry. Where a role depends on a medical, driving or maritime qualification, verify that with the issuing body too. Forged and expired certificates are common precisely because so few employers check.

Take references seriously

• Speak to supervisors, not colleagues or friends.
• Cover the whole relevant period, not just the most recent role.
• Call the organisation's main number rather than the number the candidate supplied.
• Ask specifically: would you deploy this person again, and why?
• Probe every gap of more than a couple of months.

Criminal record and financial context

Run the criminal record check appropriate to the jurisdiction and the role, and repeat it periodically rather than only at hire. For roles with access to cash, valuables or sensitive information, consider a proportionate financial check where local law allows — severe financial pressure is a recognised risk factor, handled fairly and with consent.

The checks organisations usually skip

• Open-source review: public posts revealing client details, extremist affiliation or poor judgment.
• Re-vetting existing staff. Most programmes check at hire and never again.
• Subcontractor chains. If your provider subcontracts, confirm the same standard applies downstream.
• Offboarding: recovering passes, keys, uniforms and system access the same day.
• Written confirmation that the person on shift is the person you vetted.

Do it lawfully

In the EU and UK, vetting is personal data processing. Collect only what the role justifies, tell candidates what you check and why, store documents securely with access limited to the people who need it, and delete what you no longer need. A vetting file kept in a shared drive is itself a security incident waiting to happen.

Opgrid Solutions reviews every profile before it enters the pool and keeps candidate documents in private storage, released only through time-limited links to approved clients.