Ask Shield of Steel.

Shield of Steel is Memphis's veteran-owned private security firm, licensed by the Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance under TN Lic. #14310 and headquartered at 2682 Lamar Ave. Founded by U.S. military veterans Waiel A., the firm fields armed and unarmed officers, GPS-tracked mobile patrols, alarm response, executive protection, event security, and a full cyber practice across all 95 Tennessee counties and all 82 Mississippi counties. Dispatch runs 24/7 from Memphis with live-human pickup in an average of 2.1 rings.

Hiring armed security in Tennessee means contracting with a licensed contract security company registered under the TN Department of Commerce & Insurance — Private Protective Services. You do not hire armed officers directly; you hire a firm whose officers are armed-license-holders on the company's TN permit. To start with Shield of Steel, call dispatch at (202) 222-2225 or request a free signed site assessment. A senior officer will visit, walk your property, and deliver a written plan with a line-item quote inside ten business days.

Shield of Steel pricing starts at $25 per hour for unarmed officers and $30 per hour for armed officers, with everything — labour, supervision, dispatch, equipment, uniform, and insurance — fully line-itemed on the proposal so there are no hidden surcharges. Rates scale up with complexity (access-control density, armed-uplift, hazardous-site pay, executive-protection, short-notice staffing) and volume discounts apply above 500 monthly hours. Every proposal is delivered within ten business days of the site assessment, free of charge and with no obligation.

Unarmed officers provide uniformed deterrent, access control, visitor management, incident reporting, and observation — the right fit for offices, retail, hospitality, multifamily, and most routine posts. Armed officers carry a sidearm under a separate TN state-armed-security licence, are range-qualified, and are used for high-risk sites, cash handling, executive presence, critical infrastructure, or posts where the threat profile justifies the firearm. Both are W-2 employees of Shield of Steel, drug-screened, background-checked, and licensed by the State of Tennessee.

When your alarm panel trips, your monitoring company places a dispatch call to Shield of Steel. A licensed officer in a marked patrol vehicle is routed via encrypted dispatch to the site, body-cam engaged. On arrival, the officer verifies whether the alarm is a break-in, an emergency, or a false trigger, secures the perimeter, and coordinates with local law enforcement when the incident is real. An after-action report with timestamps, photos, and a written incident log is delivered to your portal within 24 hours. Median response is 6 min 18 sec; metro SLA under 10 minutes.

CMMC Level 2 is the Department of Defense's cybersecurity maturity certification for contractors handling Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). It maps to the 110 security controls in NIST SP 800-171. If you're a DoD prime or sub-contractor with CUI in your environment, you will need at least CMMC Level 2 to keep winning work. Shield of Steel Cyber Command is CMMC Level 2 self-attested against NIST SP 800-171 Rev 3, runs a 3PAO-ready posture, and helps clients through gap analysis, SSP drafting, POA&M execution, and full L1/L2 readiness from our Memphis office.

Yes. Shield of Steel LLC holds Tennessee Private Protective Services contract security company licence #14310, issued by the Tennessee Department of Commerce & Insurance. The company is registered to provide both armed and unarmed security services across the state. The license number appears on every officer ID card, every vehicle decal, every proposal, every certificate of insurance, and on this website's footer. Prospective clients are encouraged to verify the license directly with the state before signing any contract.

Yes. Shield of Steel covers all 95 Tennessee counties and all 82 Mississippi counties — 177 counties total across two states. Standing posts and mobile patrols are deployed in every county we license, with regional officer rosters in West, Middle, and East Tennessee and North, Central, and South Mississippi. Rural response SLA is ≤ 18 minutes for scheduled patrols and a 17-minute p90 for alarm-response events. If you're outside a metro, ask dispatch for the named field supervisor in your county.

Network-wide median alarm response is 6 minutes 18 seconds. Metro SLA is under 10 minutes; statewide SLA is under 12 minutes; statewide 2025 median was 9 minutes 48 seconds. Dispatch pickup averages 2.1 rings — live human, any hour. Rural p90 is 17 minutes. Every site's named response time is captured in the post order and measured monthly.

Yes — every officer passes a multi-step vetting gate before they stand a post. The process includes a seven-year criminal background check, FBI fingerprinting through the TN Department of Commerce & Insurance, state licence verification, DMV check, drug screen, psychological self-disclosure review, and a reference call to prior employers. Armed officers complete additional range qualification and use-of-force training. All officers are W-2 employees, not contractors.

Never. Every officer on every Shield of Steel post is a direct W-2 employee, trained in-house, supervised by named field officers, and covered by our workers' compensation, general liability, and professional insurance policies. We do not staff through day-labour pools, temp agencies, or sub-licensed partners — full stop. This is the single biggest operational difference between Shield of Steel and most of our competitors.

Shield of Steel runs dedicated security programs for ten industries: construction, corporate office, government/municipal, healthcare, hospitality, logistics/warehousing, multifamily/HOA, retail, K-12 and higher-ed schools, and houses of worship. Each industry has a named senior officer who has served in that vertical before, plus an industry-specific post-order template refined across dozens of clients.

Typical turnaround from signed contract to first shift is five to seven business days. For urgent needs we've deployed in 24 hours using the regional bench of vetted, credentialed officers we keep on standby in each Tennessee and Mississippi metro. The long pole is almost always the site assessment and post-order review, not staffing.

Every post has a named primary officer, a named secondary, and a regional float. If the primary can't make a shift, the secondary is on-site before the gap opens; if the secondary can't, the float is. You see none of it. Across 142 active posts in calendar-year 2025, Shield of Steel's missed-post rate was 0.00%.

Shield of Steel carries $5M GL general liability, $2M professional liability, a $2M surety bond, $1M auto on every patrol vehicle, $1M cyber, and full TN workers' compensation on every W-2 officer. Certificates of insurance are delivered with every proposal, updated on renewal, and available on request. Higher limits are available at cost.

Yes. Shield of Steel will provide three reference contacts in the industry closest to yours — healthcare, property, logistics, retail, construction, or events — before you sign. All three are direct operators, not marketing contacts. Most of our new business comes from those conversations.

Yes. Shield of Steel LLC is a veteran-owned and veteran-led private security firm. Founder Waiel A. is a retired U.S. Coast Guard veteran and the principal owner of the company. Veteran ownership is a core part of how the firm runs — it shapes standards, reporting discipline, and the chain-of-command model the firm uses on every post.

Yes. Shield of Steel fields close-protection teams for principals, families, and travelling executives, with advance work, secure transport, and residential cover. Our EP officers hold federal and reciprocal-state credentials so they can travel with the principal nationally and internationally when required. Teams are staffed at two, four, or six officers depending on the threat profile and published travel schedule.

Yes. Shield of Steel Cyber Command is the firm's digital security practice — physical + digital defence under one incident commander. Services include managed SOC (24/7 US-based analyst rotation), CMMC and NIST 800-171 compliance readiness, vulnerability assessment and penetration testing, incident response and DFIR, security awareness training, cloud and identity security, network and endpoint hardening, and dark-web threat intel. Cyber Command is CMMC Level 2 self-attested and 3PAO-ready. See /pages/cyber/.

A managed Security Operations Centre (SOC) is a 24/7 team of security analysts who monitor your network, endpoints, identity platform, and cloud posture for signs of attack, using a SIEM and EDR tooling that Shield of Steel tunes and operates on your behalf. Our SOC is US-based, works a three-shift analyst rotation, correlates alerts across your stack, hunts for active threats, and delivers a weekly operations review. Response-time SLA depends on the alert severity and is captured in your service-level agreement.

Yes. Shield of Steel Cyber Command runs a full NIST SP 800-171 Rev 3 engagement: gap analysis against the 110 controls, System Security Plan (SSP) drafting, Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) execution, evidence collection, and CMMC Level 1 or Level 2 readiness. We then map the same control library onto HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or SOC 2 on request so a single internal control set earns multiple certifications.

Yes. Shield of Steel credentials officers for private events, public venues, festivals, and corporate activations across Tennessee and Mississippi. Typical deployments cover crowd management, entry screening (including magnetometer and bag checks), VIP close protection, backstage access control, and medical-team liaison. Events are priced as flat per-day teams with a named event commander. Request a proposal at least 14 days before the event date.

Yes. Shield of Steel runs statewide multi-site programs from its Memphis dispatch with a named account officer, a per-site post order, and a client portal that aggregates all sites' daily activity reports, incidents, patrol checkpoints, and KPIs. Multi-state coverage spans Tennessee and Mississippi directly; other states are supported through executive-protection and short-term advisory only, under federal and reciprocal-state credentials.

Shield of Steel is headquartered at 2682 Lamar Ave, Memphis, TN 38114. Regional offices operate in Nashville (118 16th Ave S, Ste 210) and Knoxville (1410 Kenesaw Ave, Ste 4). Dispatch runs 24/7 from the Memphis HQ with a live human on every call. The main number is (202) 222-2225; email is [email protected].

The Shield of Steel dispatch line is (202) 222-2225. It is answered live, by a person, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, from the Memphis headquarters. Average pickup is 2.1 rings. The same number reaches dispatch, recruiting, and the senior officer rotation — there is no phone tree, no voicemail, and no overseas call centre.

Shield of Steel is a regional, veteran-owned, founder-led firm — not a national franchise or a publicly-held multinational. That means one named account officer (not a call centre), W-2-only employment (not 1099 subcontracting), live-human dispatch in 2.1 rings, a converged physical + cyber practice under one incident commander, and direct founder accountability from Waiel A.. Pricing is line-itemed with no hidden surcharges, and Tennessee licensure sits on our own wall, not on a parent company's.

Yes. Shield of Steel offers free, signed, on-site risk assessments delivered by a senior officer inside ten business days of request. The assessment covers physical site inspection, perimeter and access review, existing-officer evaluation (if any), incident-history review, and a written security plan with a line-item quote. Cyber risk is assessed separately through Cyber Command's vulnerability-assessment engagement.

Standing posts, mobile patrol, and alarm response are primarily Tennessee and Mississippi — all 95 TN counties and all 82 MS counties — and we also take on selected Kentucky work when a Tennessee account has sites across the border or a client's operation straddles the state line. We won't hold licences in states we can't operationally support, which is why we're conservative about territory expansion. Executive-protection details and short-term advisory travel nationally and internationally with the principal when required, under our federal and reciprocal-state credentials. Cyber Command engagements run on any continent where the client's data lives.

Yes. Training records, licence expiration dates, range qualification sheets, and incident logs for every officer assigned to your site are available through the client portal, updated in real time. You may audit the file at any time during the contract, and we will walk you through it on request. Every new officer completes 40 hours of paid onboarding before their first post.

Yes. Shield of Steel Cyber Command supports Department of Defense primes and subs, Defense Industrial Base (DIB) small and mid-size suppliers, and any organization holding Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). Work includes NIST SP 800-171 Rev 3 alignment, CMMC Level 1 and Level 2 readiness, SSP and POA&M drafting, 3PAO-ready posture, managed SOC on segregated CUI enclaves, and incident response tuned to DFARS 252.204-7012 reporting requirements.