A security executive in your corner, at a fraction of the cost
A full-time CISO costs more than most SMBs can justify. The need for one does not care. Our vCISO retainers give you an experienced, certified security leader who owns your program: strategy, risk, compliance posture, vendor oversight, and the credibility to face your customers, examiners, and board.
Who this is for
Businesses that finished the initial compliance push and need someone to own the program going forward. Organizations whose customers, regulators, or insurers expect a named security leader. Companies making security-relevant decisions, cloud moves, new vendors, acquisitions, new markets, without an expert at the table. Districts and colleges where security accountability currently lives with whoever has the least room to refuse it. And any firm tired of security falling into the gap between the IT provider and the owner.
The problem
Security is a posture, not a project. After the assessment ends and the policies are signed, someone has to keep controls operating, review the vendors, answer the questionnaires, brief leadership, watch the threat picture, and adjust as the business changes. In most SMBs that someone is nobody, and the posture decays quietly until the next audit, incident, or renewal rediscovers everything at once. The alternatives are a full-time hire the budget cannot carry, or an MSP whose incentives stop at the infrastructure it manages. Neither is governance.
What is included
- A named vCISO with executive-level credentials who owns your security program.
- Recurring working sessions and a standing advisory line for the decisions between them.
- Program and compliance posture management: controls operating, evidence current, reassessments unsurprising.
- Security metrics and leadership reporting: vulnerabilities, awareness, incidents, and progress, briefed in business language.
- Vendor and third-party risk reviews, including customer security questionnaire responses that keep your deals moving.
- Incident advisory priority when something happens.
- Annual planning: a security roadmap and budget recommendation aligned to where the business is going.
What you walk away with
- A security program that runs, rather than a binder that ages.
- A credible name and voice in front of customers, examiners, assessors, and insurers.
- Leadership visibility into security posture without learning the jargon.
- Decisions made with an expert at the table instead of remediated after the fact.
FAQs
Q. How is this different from our MSP?
Your MSP operates infrastructure; a vCISO governs risk. The MSP answers to tickets, the vCISO answers to your business, and often oversees the MSP: setting requirements, reviewing controls, and verifying the security you assume you are getting. The roles complement rather than compete, and the separation is itself good governance.
Q. What does a retainer include?
Retainers are scoped to your size and obligations: a set cadence of working sessions, defined program responsibilities, and advisory access in between, fixed in the engagement letter so the boundaries are clear on both sides. We scope it in the first conversation.
Q. Can the vCISO represent us to customers and examiners?
Yes, and it is often the most immediately valuable part: a certified security leader answering your customers’ questionnaires, joining their vendor calls, and sitting beside you through exams and assessments.