The 2025 MOI Executive Regulation Amendment
The amendment names specific categories that must maintain round-the-clock security guarding: hotels, banks, hospitals, gold and jewelry stores, and large markets or shopping malls above a certain size threshold. For these categories, 24-hour coverage is a compliance requirement, not a risk-management choice left to the operator's discretion.
A second tier of businesses — private and international schools, event halls, medical centers, and venues under the General Entertainment Authority's licensing — face a related but distinct requirement: security guarding during operating/work hours, which is a lighter obligation than full 24-hour coverage but still mandatory, not optional.
What Counts as Compliance
Meeting this requirement means MOI-licensed guards physically present for the full required period, not a security camera system or an alarm monitoring service alone. Those are useful complements, but they don't satisfy the guarding requirement on their own.
For a hotel or bank, this typically means manned guarding at entry points plus periodic patrol coverage of the full premises. For a mall above the size threshold, it usually means guards stationed at multiple entrances and patrol coverage of common areas, not just one guard at the main door.
What Happens If You Don't Comply
Non-compliance with the mandatory guarding requirement carries real regulatory risk, not just a theoretical one: inspections can and do check for guard presence and licensing status, and businesses in the mandated categories should treat this as a compliance line item, not a nice-to-have.
Categories Under the Mandatory 24-Hour Guarding Requirement
The May 2025 amendment to the Ministry of Interior's executive regulations made round-the-clock guarding mandatory, not discretionary, for several specific categories of business in the Kingdom: hotels, banks, hospitals, gold and jewelry shops, and large markets and malls above a defined size threshold must maintain 24-hour physical guarding coverage.
Categories Requiring Working-Hours Guarding
A separate but related set of categories — private and international schools, event halls, medical centers, and licensed entertainment or exhibition-authority venues — are required to maintain guarding coverage during their working or operating hours, rather than the full 24-hour standard applied to the first category.
What '24-Hour Guarding' Actually Requires
The mandate requires physical guard presence around the clock, not CCTV monitoring alone and not an alarm-response arrangement as a substitute. A business relying purely on cameras and a monitoring center, without a licensed guard physically present, is not satisfying this specific requirement even if its overall security posture is otherwise reasonable.
Determining Whether the Mandate Applies to You
If your business operates a hotel, bank branch, hospital, gold or jewelry shop, or a market or mall above the regulation's size threshold, 24-hour guarding is mandatory rather than optional. If you're unsure whether your specific business falls under this requirement or the working-hours category, a site survey against the regulation's actual wording settles the question rather than guessing based on a general sense of your business type.
Consequences of Non-Compliance
Beyond the direct security risk of leaving a mandated facility unguarded, non-compliance carries regulatory exposure that can affect a business's licensing standing, insurance coverage, and, for publicly visible incidents, reputational consequences that extend well beyond whatever the guarding contract itself would have cost.
How the Mandate Interacts With Insurance Requirements
Insurance policies for qualifying businesses increasingly reference the 2025 guarding mandate directly, meaning non-compliance can affect not just regulatory standing but insurance coverage itself in the event of a claim. Businesses should confirm with their insurer that their current guarding arrangement satisfies both the regulatory mandate and any policy-specific security requirements, since these two obligations, while related, aren't automatically identical.
Planning for Facilities Approaching the Size Threshold
Businesses expanding toward the regulation's size threshold, a growing mall, an expanding market, should plan for the mandate proactively rather than waiting until they technically cross the threshold, since building compliant guarding into an expansion plan is considerably smoother than retrofitting it after the fact.
A Note on Multi-Location Businesses
Businesses operating multiple locations should check the mandate against each individual site rather than assuming a single company-wide answer: a retail chain might have some locations above the size threshold requiring 24-hour guarding and others below it requiring only working-hours coverage, and treating the whole chain uniformly risks either overspending at smaller locations or under-complying at larger ones.
How the Regulation Defines the Size Threshold for Malls and Markets
The specific size threshold that triggers mandatory 24-hour guarding for malls and markets is defined in the regulation's own technical criteria, and business owners shouldn't rely on a rough sense of 'this feels like a big mall' to determine applicability. A precise reading of the regulation's actual size definition, or a site survey conducted specifically against that definition, is the only reliable way to confirm whether a specific property falls above or below the threshold.
Planning Ahead of a Ministry Inspection
Businesses subject to this mandate should expect periodic Ministry inspections verifying compliance, and maintaining current documentation — guard licensing, shift logs, and evidence of continuous coverage — ready for review at any time avoids the scramble of assembling this evidence reactively when an inspector arrives unannounced.
How This Mandate Interacts With Franchise and Chain Operations
Franchise operators running multiple branded locations under a single corporate umbrella should confirm compliance is being managed consistently across every franchisee location, not just the corporate-owned flagships, a franchise brand's overall reputation can be damaged by a single non-compliant location, even if the parent company itself maintains rigorous standards elsewhere.
Practical Steps for Confirming Compliance Today
If you're uncertain whether your business currently satisfies this mandate, start with a straightforward internal audit: confirm your facility type against the regulation's named categories, check your current guarding arrangement against the 24-hour physical presence standard (not just camera coverage), and if any gap exists, address it proactively rather than waiting for a Ministry inspection to identify it for you.
Confirming Whether the Mandate Applies to You
If you're unsure whether your specific business falls under the mandatory 24-hour category, the working-hours category, or neither, send us your facility type and size, and we'll help you work through the regulation's actual criteria rather than leaving you to guess.
The Bottom Line on This Mandate
This mandate isn't a suggestion or a best practice: for the named categories, it's a firm legal requirement with real regulatory, insurance, and reputational consequences for non-compliance. If your business falls into any of the categories discussed, treating 24-hour physical guarding as non-negotiable, and confirming your current arrangement genuinely satisfies it rather than approximates it, protects your business considerably more than any cost saved by cutting corners here.
Taking Action on This Today
If reading this has raised any doubt about your own business's compliance status, don't let that doubt sit unresolved: a straightforward site assessment against the regulation's actual categories and thresholds can settle the question definitively, and addressing any gap proactively is always less costly than discovering it during a Ministry inspection or, worse, after an incident occurs.
We Can Help Confirm Where You Stand
Send us your facility type, size, and current guarding arrangement, and we'll help you confirm whether the 24-hour mandate, the working-hours requirement, or neither applies to your specific business, and if a gap exists, build a compliant proposal to close it.
Compliant From the First Day of Your Contract
If your business falls under this mandate, we build genuine 24-hour physical coverage into your staffing plan from the very first day, not camera monitoring dressed up as compliance, but the actual guard presence the regulation requires.
Reach Out
Send us your facility type and current arrangement on WhatsApp, and we'll help confirm your compliance status today rather than leaving you to guess.
Sector Pages for Each Mandated Category
The categories named in the mandate this article covers each have a dedicated page with sector-specific detail: banks and financial institutions, hotels, hospitals, and large malls and markets.
Frequently Asked Questions
Only if you fall into one of the specifically named categories (hotels, banks, hospitals, gold/jewelry stores, large malls/markets above the size threshold). Smaller general retail stores are not automatically included.
No. The requirement is for physically present, MOI-licensed security guards during the required hours. CCTV and alarm systems are valuable additions but don't substitute for guard presence under this regulation.
24-hour guarding applies to the first tier (hotels, banks, hospitals, gold/jewelry stores, large malls). Work-hours guarding — covering only operating hours, not overnight — applies to a second tier including schools, event halls, and medical centers.