NAICS 561612Canadian industry · 6-digitlocal market1 market record

Security guard and patrol services

SoftwareSecurity Guard & Patrol Workforce Software

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in providing guard and patrol services. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 1,145
Under 10 employeesA: 34%
Establishments · USA: 10,659
Employment · USA: 764,680
Payroll · USA: $23.4B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–423721%

5–915514%

10–1915213%

20–4918316%

50–9915514%

100–19911110%

200–499989%

500+545%

Of 1,145 Canadian establishments with employees, 34% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Ontario43038%

British Columbia31828%

Alberta14212%

Quebec10910%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Administrative and Waste Services, US · opened 2020

79.4%

1 year

63.6%

3 years

51.5%

5 years

37%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 561, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionlow capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 561 Administrative and support services

Janitorial, landscaping, security and staffing: low capital and easy to start, so margins are competed down to labour cost. Route density and contract retention decide the outcome.

Who sets the price: Tender and the client's procurement; labour is most of the cost.
The software it runs on: Workforce scheduling, route and work-order management, staffing front and back office.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

No operating-business record sits in this industry — the record filed here is a software market, shown in the next section.

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Vertical softwareScreened

Security Guard & Patrol Workforce SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: incumbent vulnerability

Incumbent Split by layer: TEAM Software / WinTeam (WorkWave, an IFS company) for back-office ERP at the large guard firms; Trackforce (TrackTik, GuardTek, Silvertrac; K1 Investment Management) for field operations, guard tour and incident reporting

Guard-company software has two incumbents, and a buyer usually needs both of them. The back office of the big guard firms runs on TEAM Software. WinTeam is an ERP that holds payroll, billing and job costing for contract security and janitorial companies. TEAM says 65% of the largest US security companies run on it [C, vendor, checked 2026-10-08]. It has sat inside WorkWave, an IFS company, since September 2021 [B, from the 561722 record]. The field layer has already been rolled up by Trackforce. Guard tours, post orders, incident reports, mobile patrols and client portals are its ground. Trackforce is backed by K1 Investment Management. It bought Silvertrac, the small-firm tool with 600+ North American customers, in January 2020 [B]. It then bought Montreal's TrackTik in June 2022, on undisclosed terms [B: BetaKit, K1 release]. TrackTik had raised $54.5M by then, the last $45M in January 2019 from Georgian and CDPQ [B]. Trackforce now sells TrackTik, GuardTek (its EMEA product) and Silvertrac under one roof, and claims 600k+ active users in 50+ countries [C, vendor]. The only Canadian champion in the category is therefore already inside a US private-equity platform. The funded challengers attack the gap between the two: one system for back office and field, sold to small and mid-size guard firms. Belfry (New York) raised a $12M Series A in January 2025 led by Base10 Partners, bringing it to $20M in total [B]. Guardhouse (Sydney) started on an A$850K seed in 2020 [B]. It took growth equity from Sundance Growth in March 2026 [B: BDO deal note, amount undisclosed]. In August 2026 it bought Florida's Mobohubb to add patrol verification and push into the US [C, vendor release]. Guard Owl reportedly raised a $3M seed led by Tower Research Capital in February 2026 [C, not confirmed from a primary source]. Below them is a long, cheap tail. QR-Patrol (Terracom, Greece) lists guard-tour plans from $3.20 a guard a month, and Guardix from $8.99 a user a month [C, vendor price pages]. OfficerReports (Baton Rouge) claims 700+ companies [C], and Celayix sells shift scheduling across security and healthcare. The buyers are consolidating faster than the software. Allied Universal closed its $5.28B purchase of G4S in March 2021, creating a $18B-revenue firm with 750,000+ staff [B]. Every large consolidation takes a WinTeam-or-Trackforce customer off the market for a newcomer. What is left is thousands of small, thin-margin guard firms. The best-funded entrant in years (Belfry, $20M) and an Australian roll-up (Guardhouse) are already chasing them. Incumbent vulnerability decides it. Neither incumbent is weak, the consolidators below them are pulling share toward the enterprise products, and the SMB seat is contested by Belfry, Guardhouse, Silvertrac and a sub-$10-a-guard tail. The only angle worth keeping is a narrow one for an operator: in BC, guard licensing and compliance tracking under the provincial security-worker licence regime could be sold as an add-on that plugs into TrackTik or WinTeam, rather than as a competing platform.

NAICS 5616129 vendors namedOpen →

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 10

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
IFSPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	1/10
TEAM SoftwarePrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	2/10
BelfryPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	3/10
CelayixPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	4/10
Guard OwlPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	5/10
GuardhousePrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	6/10
GuardixPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	7/10
OfficerReportsPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	8/10
QR-PatrolPrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	9/10
TrackforcePrivate	Security guard and patrol services561612	—	10/10

Who works here

The occupations employed in Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Security guards and related security service occupations Mostly one sector 69.7%

Contractors and supervisors, agriculture, horticulture and related operations and services Mostly one sector 67.9%

Logging, forestry, landscaping and other related labourers Mostly one sector 56%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 16.8%

Service supervisors Mostly one sector 14.2%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 12.9%

Educational and employment counsellors Mostly one sector 8.5%

Logging and forestry workers Mostly one sector 6.4%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 6.3%

Roofers, glaziers, painters, decorators and floor covering installers One industry 4.7%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 29.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 15%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 13.5%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 6.6%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 4.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 4.5%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 4%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 4%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 3.9%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Alongside this industry

This is the most specific level NAICS defines. The other industries under 56161 are its nearest neighbours.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
561611	Investigation services	316	screened at 56161
561613	Armoured car services	96	screened at 56161