Close-protection teams for principals, families, and traveling executives — run by veterans who built their careers on federal details. Discreet by default: business suits more often than tac gear, low-visibility travel more often than motorcade theatre. The win condition is that no one in the room realizes the detail is there.
Most of our Memphis principals come to us at one of four inflection points — a planned visibility moment, an unfamiliar travel environment, a recent decision that raised their profile, or a concern that reached past them to their family. None of them feel like an emergency when they call. Most of them end up glad they called early.
IPO, acquisition closing, earnings call, leadership change, keynote appearance, charity gala, or any scheduled moment where the principal becomes temporarily more locatable, photographable, and approachable than usual. A two-week window of heightened posture usually covers it.
Business travel to jurisdictions where local law enforcement is thin, kidnap-for-ransom numbers are non-trivial, or the principal's industry itself draws local attention. We run in-country advance and partner locally before the principal lands.
Litigation, a workforce reduction, a controversial policy stance, a whistleblower event, or direct threats received at the office. The detail goes on, an assessment gets written, and the posture steps down as the situation normalizes — not the other way around.
A spouse has been approached, a child's school has been referenced, or a family residence has shown up in unusual open-source chatter. The family detail is typically the first program we stand up, often before the principal's own.
Every Shield of Steel protective detail is engineered back-to-front from a written threat assessment, through advance work, to an after-action that feeds the next engagement. These six stages are the spine of every program we run, from a one-day principal appearance to a standing 24/7 retainer.
Written assessment covering principal exposure, open-source footprint, residential risk, travel pattern, family profile, and any historical incidents. Delivered under NDA — and it is the document every decision in the program traces back to.
An agent surveys each destination before the principal arrives — venue walk-through, ingress and egress, alternate routes, nearest trauma-level hospital, hotel security posture, and host-team protocols. No new city without an advance.
Lead agent, detail leader, and supporting agents drawn from a bench of federal, military, and LE-trained protectors. We rotate on fixed schedules so principals see the same faces — which matters for comfort and for pattern recognition.
Primary plus alternate routes, timing against traffic and crowd patterns, driver briefings, and vehicle prep. Low-profile black sedans and SUVs by default; armored and multi-vehicle available for elevated postures or high-visibility moves.
Electronic sweeps of residences and meeting spaces, tracker detection in vehicles, signal monitoring in transit, and open-source monitoring of principal mentions. Run by our technical lead in partnership with vetted TSCM specialists.
Every engagement ends with a written after-action: what worked, what did not, what the next detail should do differently. Shared with the principal's chief of staff, filed in the program record, and used to sharpen the standing posture.
We configure details against posture, not ego. Most of our Memphis principals run 1-up during the working day, step up to 2-up plus driver when moving, and scale to a full detail with advance for higher-visibility weeks. Residential and travel programs can run alone or in tandem — pick what maps to the actual risk.
Single agent accompanying the principal — office, meetings, commute, evening events. The right posture for elevated-but-not-crisis periods and for principals who prefer to keep the footprint minimal without going unprotected.
Detail leader with the principal, second agent on overwatch, and a dedicated protected-transport driver who stays with the vehicle. This is our most-deployed configuration for Memphis C-suite principals on standard movement days.
Detail leader, protective agents, dedicated advance team working 24–72 hours ahead, and a multi-vehicle motorcade when warranted. For high-visibility weeks, hostile travel, or post-threat posture where redundancy matters.
Continuous coverage of the principal's primary residence — shift rotation at the gate or entry, interior patrol, visitor and package screening, and integration with house staff. Technical program (CCTV, access control) designed alongside.
Road-warrior support for executives who do not want a standing detail but travel into environments that warrant one. Advance, secure ground transport, hotel cover, and on-site agent — stood up per trip, stood down on return.
Agents assigned to spouse and school-age children — quiet, school-coordinated, and trained specifically around family protection. Often runs alongside the principal's own detail on a shared dispatch and a shared threat picture.
The questions we hear most often — from Memphis executives at FedEx, AutoZone, International Paper, and the regional healthcare systems; from family offices; and from boards doing the due diligence before they call. Real answers, not sales language.
If you are making a public announcement, visible business change, or entering litigation; if you have received direct threats or unusual contact; if your family has been approached; or if you routinely travel to unsecured regions — those are the signals. We will do a no-cost threat-and-likelihood review before you commit to any detail, and if the honest answer is that you do not need one, we will tell you that. Most of our standing retainers started as a single conversation about whether a standing retainer was even necessary.
Lead agents typically hold an ASIS Certified Protection Professional (CPP) or Personal Protection Specialist (PPS) credential, alongside low-visibility and protective-driver coursework, and TCOLE, EMT, or federal backgrounds. All agents are TN-licensed armed officers, cleared through multi-stage vetting that goes well beyond our standard W-2 hiring screen. Many came up through USSS, FBI, DSS, military CID, or metro SWAT before joining our bench.
Yes. We operate worldwide through reciprocal credentialing, vetted local partners, and in-country advance teams in most major business hubs. For higher-risk jurisdictions we coordinate with local protective intelligence providers and country specialists before the principal lands. We only carry firearms where the jurisdiction explicitly permits it, and in jurisdictions where we do not, we staff accordingly and rely on evasion, access control, and secure transport rather than deterrence.
Yes — advance work is the part of executive protection that actually prevents incidents, and we treat it as non-negotiable for any new city. For each business trip we can send an agent 24 to 72 hours ahead to walk the venues, survey primary and alternate routes, verify hotel security posture, identify the nearest trauma-capable hospital, and brief the principal detail before arrival. A two-agent advance is our default for any destination we have not personally covered before.
By default, low-visibility. Our agents wear business suits in corporate settings, dress down to match the environment in casual ones, and carry concealed. The intent is that colleagues, vendors, and counterparties should not know a detail is present unless the principal chooses to introduce them. If a visible show of presence is ever warranted — at a protest-adjacent appearance, a post-threat event, or a public announcement — that is a deliberate tactical call, not our default posture. We do not do dark-sunglasses cosplay.
Yes, and we usually do. One of our senior agents is assigned as the day-to-day liaison to your principal's office, and we integrate with your EA, chief of staff, travel team, or office manager through shared calendar access, a secure briefing document updated each week, and standing short calls. We follow your office's protocols — calendar cadence, communication channels, travel-booking workflow — not the other way around. The detail should make the chief of staff's job easier, not add a second chain of command to manage.
A 1-up daytime detail typically runs $1,800 to $2,400 per agent-day; a 2-up with dedicated driver runs $4,500 to $6,000 per day. Full 24/7 retainers with residential coverage and travel support usually sit in the $40,000 to $90,000 per month range depending on scale, threat posture, and travel frequency. Travel-only programs bill per trip. Every engagement is proposed line-by-line — you see the agent days, the vehicle days, the advance hours, and the technical program separately so you can dial the scope up or down without guessing at the number.
Yes — most principals we protect are on a combined program. Residential coverage stays in place when the principal travels (family detail, estate monitoring, package and visitor screening) while the travel team deploys on the road. One program, one dispatch, one named account supervisor who sees both sides of the picture. For healthcare-sector principals this also means the residential program is tuned to HIPAA-sensitive handling — we do not photograph, log, or transmit anything that could become a privacy exposure around family medical information.
Every executive-protection engagement starts with a confidential conversation — thirty minutes by phone, mutual NDA in place before you share anything material, and a written threat-and-likelihood review inside ten business days. No pitch deck, no case studies with names, no marketing follow-up. If the answer is that you do not need a detail, we say so.
