TAK for private security
A lone officer is where they should be, or has stopped being. Knowing which, without waiting on a scheduled phone call, is most of what this is for.
Know where the detail is
Live positions for every officer on shift, across every site you cover.
Routes and posts, drawn once
Patrol routes, posts and exclusion areas on every device instead of in a briefing nobody has in front of them.
Evidence for the client
Tracks come back, so what was covered is something you can show rather than something you assert.
Most of this industry runs on trust and paperwork. A live map turns both into something you can point at.
Patrols you can demonstrate, not just report
The commercial problem in contract security is not usually coordination. It is proof. A client is buying a presence they cannot see, and the artefact they get is a sheet somebody signed at the end of a shift.
Tracks change that without adding a process. Officers carry a device that is already on the map, and their movement is the record. A quarterly review stops being a discussion about whether patrols happened and becomes a discussion about coverage — which is a better conversation to be having, and usually a better one for the contractor too.
Protective details and the moment coordination matters
A detail spends almost all of its time being uneventful, and the whole job is the handful of minutes that are not. In those minutes, the questions are about position: where the vehicle is, where the secondary route goes, which member of the team is nearest the exit that matters.
None of that is well served by radio alone, because radio conveys positions as descriptions and descriptions take time to resolve. A shared map conveys them as positions.
Multiple clients, kept apart
A contractor covering several clients has a data-separation problem that a single shared map would make worse rather than better. One client’s operating picture should not contain another’s sites, staff or movements.
Networks are isolated by default, so the straightforward answer is a network per client. Where a client genuinely needs to see their own picture, federation lets you share exactly that and nothing adjacent to it.
Lone workers and remote sites
The sites that are hardest to staff are the ones where somebody works alone, often at night, often somewhere with no reason for anyone else to be. The duty of care there is real and is usually discharged by a scheduled phone call.
A position on a map is not a replacement for a welfare policy, but it removes the part of it that depends on somebody remembering to ring. Whoever is watching can see that a lone officer is where they should be, and notice when they stop being.
It is worth being straight about the limit: this shows position, not condition. It tells you where somebody is and when they last moved. Treat it as one input to a welfare process rather than as the process itself, and keep the check-in schedule you already have.
Common questions
Can we prove a patrol actually happened?
Tracks come back from the devices, so a patrol route is something you can look at rather than something reported. That is a very different conversation with a client than a signed sheet.
Does this work across sites in different cities?
Yes. The network is not tied to a location, so guards at separate sites appear on the same picture. Use separate networks per client if you would rather keep them apart.
Can a client see their own site without seeing the others?
Yes — that is what per-organization isolation and federation are for. You decide what crosses a boundary, so one client’s picture does not include another’s.
What about lone workers on remote sites?
Their position is visible to whoever is watching the map, which is most of the value: somebody knows where they are without having to call and ask.
Do guards need company phones?
No. ATAK runs on ordinary Android devices and iTAK on iPhones, both free, so a pilot does not require issuing hardware.
The server was the only thing in the way
Five devices, free, with no card and no clock. Put your team on one map for a weekend and find out properly.