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Cybersecurity is an ever-growing challenge across all industries, requiring consistent effort to protect sensitive data, manage risks, and comply with an increasing number of regulations. Organizations, regardless of size, need expert leadership and guidance to ensure their security posture is evolving and aligned with industry standards.
With our vCISO services, we provide leadership at a fraction of the cost of a full-time Chief Information Security Officer. Our services scale with the client’s regulatory needs through, vCISO Cybersecure and vCISO Cybersecure – Regulatory tiers giving you the flexibility to engage at the level of service client organization requires.
Our service tiers are designed to fit organizations at different stages of their security maturity and regulatory needs. Whether you’re just starting out or need executive-level security leadership, we are here to help you navigate your cybersecurity journey.
Organizations across industries are struggling with the complex and ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity. As businesses grow and adopt new technologies, they face a wide range of security challenges that can leave them vulnerable to attacks, data breaches, and regulatory non-compliance. These challenges include:
Lack of Specialized Cybersecurity Expertise: Many organizations lack the necessary in-house expertise to effectively manage cybersecurity risks. As cyber threats become more sophisticated, internal IT teams may not have the capacity or training to stay ahead of emerging risks, leading to gaps in security.
Increasing Cybersecurity Complexity: Organizations often struggle to navigate the complex and rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape. With the increasing frequency of cyberattacks and the sophistication of threat actors, it is essential for businesses to implement proactive and ongoing measures to protect their data and networks.
Regulatory Compliance Pressures: Businesses must comply with a growing list of regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and others, which require comprehensive cybersecurity policies and practices. Non-compliance can result in financial penalties, legal repercussions, and damage to brand reputation.
Inability to Scale Security Efforts: As organizations grow, they may find it difficult to scale their security efforts effectively. Without the right leadership, security programs may become fragmented, making it harder to prioritize risks, allocate resources efficiently, and ensure continuous improvement.
Limited Executive Oversight of Security: Without a dedicated cybersecurity executive or strategic guidance, organizations may struggle to align security efforts with broader business objectives. This can lead to misaligned priorities, ineffective use of resources, and an overall lack of focus on the most critical security issues.
Gaps in Traditional MSP Services: While many organizations already rely on an MSP for day-to-day IT operations, most MSPs are not equipped to deliver executive-level cybersecurity leadership. This leaves businesses with operational support but without the strategic oversight needed to address risks, compliance, and long-term resilience. Our combined MSP and vCISO approach bridges this gap, giving clients both operational coverage and executive-level security guidance
The need for external expertise to bridge these gaps is clear. A vCISO offers the strategic oversight necessary to drive security maturity, ensure compliance, and prepare for evolving cyber threats while delivering high-level leadership that drives security initiatives across the entire organization.
The ongoing virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) engagement delivers experienced, executive-level cybersecurity leadership that helps organizations make informed decisions, reduce risk, and build sustainable security practices, without the overhead of hiring a full-time CISO.
At the outset of the engagement, we conduct a Security Maturity Level Assessment (SMLA) to establish a clear, framework-aligned understanding of the organization’s current security posture. This ensures leadership knows exactly where the organization stands, where the gaps are, and what should be prioritized.
In parallel, we create a Risk Register that consolidates internal and external risk inputs; such as audit findings, penetration tests, and vendor assessments; into a centralized view of the organization’s exposure. This empowers stakeholders to make smarter decisions by identifying and prioritizing real-world risks that affect the business. This ensures that the IT investment is targeted to have the most significant impact to the client’s security posture and most effectively reduce their risk foot print.
These two components; the SMLA and Risk Register form the strategic foundation for a Security Roadmap, which outlines the key initiatives and milestones to be addressed throughout the vCISO engagement cycle. The roadmap provides a clear, actionable plan that aligns security efforts with business goals that provide the highest return on investment, helping leadership track progress and maintain forward momentum.
Throughout the engagement, we maintain and review an executive dashboard that tracks roadmap progress, trends in security awareness, vulnerabilities, dark web exposure, and updates from ongoing internal and external activities. These insights are delivered during regular review sessions to ensure the right stakeholders remain engaged and informed.
At the yearly anniversary, clients walk away with more than just advice, they receive a year-long record of strategic progress, a mature understanding of their security posture, and a clearly defined path forward that supports regulatory readiness, risk reduction, and long-term security resilience.
Sections: Security Maturity Level Assessment (SMLA) | Annual Risk Assessment | Security Roadmap Creation | Policy Guidance and Workshops | Compliance Framework Advice | Executive Dashboard Creation & Maintenance: | Semi-Annual Review Cadence: | Awareness Training | Dark Web Findings Review: | SOC/SIEM Review | Internal & External Vulnerability Review: | Support for External Security Activities:
Foundational oversight for organizations beginning their cybersecurity maturity journey and do not have to adhere to any regulatory or client driven compliance.
A foundational Security Maturity Level Assessment (SMLA) designed to establish a clear baseline of the client’s cybersecurity posture. Using the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls (CIS 18) as the assessment framework, we evaluate the organization’s alignment with fundamental security practices across areas such as access control, data protection, and incident response. The assessment is conducted annually through stakeholder interviews.
Deliverables: An executive-level summary showing your current security maturity level using CIS 18.
Baseline risk assessment designed to help organizations identify and understand their most critical security gaps at a foundational level. This is a point-in-time evaluation that leverages industry-accepted practices, mapped against the CIS Top 18 controls and updated by discovery workshops with the client. The focus is on surface-level risks related to administrative controls, user behavior, access management, and general infrastructure hygiene. We evaluate these risks through the lens of likelihood and impact, then prioritize them to provide the client with mitigation recommendations and/or risk acceptance strategies. The assessment does not include in-depth interviews across departments or business units, nor does it attempt to exhaustively identify all risk categories; rather, it helps establish a security baseline and provides a starting point for tracking maturity.
Deliverables: Client receives a risk register which is reviewed semi-annually to identify key risks, ownership, and mitigation tracking.
Develop a 12-month security roadmap rooted in the results of the initial Security Maturity Level Assessment (SMLA) and the associated risk register. This roadmap offers a prioritized sequence of actions based on high-impact, low-complexity initiatives that improve baseline security hygiene. Using the CIS Top 18 as the maturity framework, we help the client identify and rank areas such as endpoint controls, access management, password hygiene, and foundational awareness activities. The roadmap is designed to be practical and achievable for organizations with limited resources or early-stage security programs. It is created early in the engagement, reviewed during the mid-year checkpoint, and finalized at the end of the engagement as part of the closing deliverables, giving the client a tangible, action-oriented path forward.
Deliverables: Client receives a roadmap integrated into the Executive Dashboard, that shows security improvement priorities and links them to risk.
Policy workshops are designed to introduce clients to the core set of cybersecurity policies every organization should have in place. These sessions provide foundational education on key policy topics, such as Acceptable Use, Access Control, Incident Response, and Data Classification and include review of any existing documentation. We help clients understand why each policy is important, what elements should be included, and how they align with best practices from the CIS Top 18. We provide policy leadership and quality assurance: we supply templates and examples as needed, map coverage to the CIS Top 18, and deliver prioritized edits with clear implementation guidance. The client team authors, circulates, and approves the final policy content so it reflects actual business processes, aligns with Legal/HR requirements, and is enforceable within the organization. This ownership drives adoption, accountability, and sustainable governance, while our oversight ensures policies remain effective and aligned with best practices.
Deliverables: Client receives written feedback and improvement suggestions after a policy review workshop. Policy drafting is still handled by the client.
We provide expert-driven guidance to help clients identify which cybersecurity frameworks, such as NIST CSF, HIPAA, or SOC 2 Type 2, are most relevant to their environment. This guidance is advisory in nature, grounded in our experience, the client’s business context, and known industry expectations. The designated vCISO interprets how these frameworks apply at a high level, highlights key security themes, and explains how aligning with them can strengthen the organization’s risk posture.
The focus is on giving clients directional insight into which frameworks best fit their current and future needs and outlining what readiness under those frameworks would generally entail. This ensures leadership has clarity on where to focus security investments and how to prepare for potential future regulatory obligations. While this guidance shapes strategic decisions, it is not a substitute for a detailed readiness or gap analysis, which would require a separate engagement.
Deliverables: These insights are reflected in the Executive Dashboard for continued visibility.
Develop an executive dashboard to support the single mid-year review and final yearend report. This dashboard provides a summarized view of progress against the security roadmap, highlights from dark web monitoring, high-level observations from awareness training metrics, and notable advisory notes based on industry risk trends. It is created once during the engagement; updated with the mid-year review and is intended to provide directional insights to help organizations with emerging security programs stay focused. While the dashboard does not cover external initiatives or compliance progress, it sets a foundation for broader tracking in future engagements. At the conclusion of the 1-year engagement, the final version of this dashboard is delivered to the client via email for recordkeeping and continued reference.
Deliverables: Client receives a dashboard report showing progress on roadmap actions, risk posture, and other key metrics defined in scope of this tier integrated into the Executive Dashboard.
A mid-year strategic review that serves as a key checkpoint to assess progress on security initiatives and refine priorities. This session includes a walkthrough of the executive dashboard, highlighting high-level trends such as roadmap milestones, awareness training participation, dark web exposure findings, and notable updates on active initiatives. It provides an opportunity to re-align priorities based on changes in business objectives or the threat landscape. The cadence is intentionally set to one structured review per year (midway through the engagement), offering a focused and efficient touchpoint regardless of the organization’s cybersecurity maturity or internal capacity. While clients may reach out with ad hoc questions throughout the year, the formal review cadence remains semi-annual.
Deliverables: Alongside the updated Executive Dashboard, the client receives a written summary via email after the mid-year meeting, covering key updates, upcoming actions, and leadership recommendations, that were discussed in the review meeting.
Review of the client’s training platforms (e.g., KnowBe4, Huntress SAT, BullPhish ID) and ongoing trainings based on client size, industry, and regulatory needs. Recommend essential training topics such as phishing, password hygiene, and social engineering. Offer strategic input on phishing simulation setup, cadence, and how to interpret platform-provided metrics to assess effectiveness. The SAT platform trainings and phishing campaigns will run as they have in the past, vCISO’s focus will be on the interpretation of the results.
Deliverables: Summary on annual security awareness training and phishing simulation metrics, with campaign results summarized and integrated into the Executive Dashboard.
Dark web monitoring should be enabled continuously for the organization’s primary domain or any other email address that is being monitored. Alerts for exposed credentials are automatically sent to the client’s internal IT team or ITS Service Desk as they are discovered. The vCISO does not engage in real-time alert triage but instead reviews the exposure trends and summaries during the mid-year meeting and final-year summary as part of the executive dashboard. These reviews focus on identifying patterns, confirming remediation actions are being taken, and recommending preventative measures like stronger password practices or increased MFA enforcement. Findings from the automated platform are also included in the final year-end dashboard, helping the client understand long-term identity exposure trends and opportunities for improvement.
Deliverables: Client receives a dark web exposure summary integrated into the Executive Dashboard.
The vCISO conducts a semi-annual strategic review of correlated SIEM data to identify trends, recurring alerts, and missed opportunities that could indicate security control weaknesses or evolving threats. This is not a replacement for SOC operations, but an added layer of oversight to ensure alerts align with business risk and support ongoing improvement to enhance the security posture of the client. The review highlights potential tuning opportunities, visibility gaps, and misaligned priorities in the alerting logic. The SOC team continues to monitor real-time alerts, investigates potential incidents, and coordinates the technical response needed to contain threats. Their focus is operational, ensuring that alerts are detected and acted upon quickly.
The vCISO reviews SOC outputs at a strategic level, looking for recurring patterns, tuning opportunities, and misalignments between alerts and business risks. By highlighting trends and identifying areas where detection can be refined or expanded, the vCISO ensures monitoring efforts remain effective and aligned with organizational priorities. This approach gives leadership clarity on whether detection capabilities are keeping pace with the threat landscape and where improvements should be prioritized.
Deliverables: Semi-annual SIEM review summary, delivered as part of the executive dashboard, outlining key trends, areas for improvement, and actionable recommendations for enhancing the SIEM’s alignment with business objectives.
The vCISO conducts a semi-annual strategic review of the client’s internal and external vulnerability scan results. This review highlights recurring weaknesses, aging vulnerabilities, and patterns that suggest gaps in accountability or process enforcement. By interpreting scan data through the lens of the organization’s overall risk profile, the vCISO provides leadership with clear visibility into where remediation efforts should be prioritized to reduce exposure.
Operational activities such as running scans, monitoring alerts, and applying patches are handled by the client’s internal IT team, ITS NOC team, or MSP partner. The vCISO’s role is to ensure those technical efforts are effectively guided at the executive level, focusing on business impact, resource prioritization, and long-term risk reduction. This ensures vulnerabilities are not only identified, but strategically addressed in alignment with the client’s broader security objectives.
Deliverables: Incorporated in the semi-annual Executive Dashboard, a vulnerability review summary that includes a high-level analysis of exposure trends, identification of repeated or unaddressed issues, and strategic guidance on prioritizing remediation based on impact and feasibility. The summary highlights where accountability or process improvements may be needed and supports leadership with a clear understanding of the client’s evolving vulnerability posture.
Support is included for up to two insurance questionnaires per year, provided each requires no more than two hours to complete. If a questionnaire exceeds this effort or if additional third-party documentation is requested (e.g., vendor assessments, client compliance forms), it will be scoped separately as a professional services project.
Deliverables: Completion of up to two standard insurance questionnaires (within the defined effort limit). Additional or time-intensive requests will be reviewed for separate scoping.
Sections: Detailed Security Maturity Level Assessment: | Risk Register Development and Review: | Security Roadmap Creation: | Policy and Documentation Guidance | Compliance Framework Advice | Executive Dashboard Creation & Maintenance | Quarterly Strategic Reviews | Security Awareness Program Oversight | Dark Web Monitoring and Reporting | SOC/SIEM Review | Internal & External Vulnerability Review: | Support for External Security Activities
Structured engagement for organizations with regulatory exposure and a need for regular security program development.
The SMLA offers a program-level evaluation designed for organizations with established security environments or regulatory exposure. It leverages frameworks such as CIS Top 18, NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), or another mutually agreed upon framework aligned with the client’s compliance obligations or internal objectives. Conducted annually, the assessment includes stakeholder interviews, documentation reviews, and selective control validation. Rather than exhaustively cataloging every gap, the focus is on identifying high-impact areas for improvement and strategic alignment.
Deliverables: Clients receive an annual maturity assessment report aligned to the selected framework, including an overall score, a summary of strengths, and prioritized areas of weakness to inform future planning and support compliance readiness.
A formal cyber risk assessment is conducted once per year, typically early in the engagement, and aligned with the client’s selected framework (e.g., SOC 2 Type 2, NIST CSF, HIPAA, CIS Controls). If a cyber risk register already exists, we review and enhance it; otherwise, we help establish one. The assessment incorporates input from IT, compliance, and operations to identify key cybersecurity risks, assess likelihood and impact, and provide high-level recommendations. Cyber risk statuses are reviewed quarterly to track remediation progress, identify new threats, and adjust priorities.
Deliverables: An annual cyber risk review, including a reviewed or newly developed cyber risk register, with risks categorized by likelihood and impact and accompanied by high-level recommendations. Quarterly updates summarizing changes in risk status, emerging threats, and remediation progress are incorporated into the Executive Dashboard.
The SMLA and cyber risk assessment inform a framework-aligned security roadmap that supports both current-year initiatives and long-term planning. Based on the client’s selected framework (e.g., NIST CSF, HIPAA, CIS), the roadmap highlights key areas for improvement across governance, technology, user behavior, and third-party risk. It prioritizes actions based on identified weaknesses, cyber risk severity, business impact, and compliance drivers.
After initial creation, roadmap statuses are reviewed and updated quarterly to reflect progress, shifts in risk, or changes in business context. The full roadmap is only refreshed if priorities materially change. Quarterly reviews focus on status updates, evolving focus areas, and discussion of roadblocks that may be impacting execution. Progress is tracked in the Executive Dashboard to provide leadership with a clear and consistent view of outcomes.
Deliverables: Client receives a framework-aligned security roadmap as part of the Executive Dashboard created early in the engagement and updated quarterly to reflect status changes, shifting focus areas, and key roadblocks. The roadmap is tied directly to identified cyber risks and maturity assessment findings, providing clear visibility into progress against strategic security priorities and recommendations on budget allocations.
Policy workshops are intended for organizations with existing policies that need to be strengthened to support compliance, audit readiness, or internal governance. The focus is on identifying gaps in policy structure, clarity, and enforcement. We provide actionable recommendations to enhance content, improve employee awareness and acknowledgment practices, and ensure policies are not just written, but actively integrated into day-to-day operations.
vCISO will guide and validate revisions, confirming alignment with the mutually agreed compliance framework and highlighting where additional improvements may be needed. The client team authors and finalizes policy language, circulates it for feedback, and secures internal approvals, ensuring that documents reflect actual practices and meet business and regulatory requirements. This division of responsibility ensures the policies are both authoritative and auditable, while our oversight provides confidence that they meet regulatory expectations and withstand scrutiny.
Deliverables: A one-time policy workshop that provides a summary of identified policy gaps and a mapping document showing alignment with the selected framework. Actionable recommendations are included to guide improvements. On a quarterly basis, policy update statuses are reflected in the Executive Dashboard, helping track progress on revisions and highlight areas requiring attention.
We provide expert-level observations on how the client’s current security program aligns with the mutually agreed-upon regulatory or industry framework, such as NIST CSF, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS. This guidance is based on our direct knowledge of the client environment and our expertise with the selected framework. The vCISO highlights strengths, identifies areas that would benefit from further maturity, and explains how adjustments can improve audit readiness and long-term resilience.
The focus is on delivering strategic insights that validate program direction, surface potential improvements, and inform executive decision-making. This ensures leadership has the clarity needed to prioritize investments and anticipate regulatory expectations. While this guidance strengthens confidence and planning, a detailed readiness or gap analysis remains outside of scope and would be delivered as a separate engagement.
Deliverables: Key takeaways and recommendations are documented in the Executive Dashboard and updated quarterly as needed.
A quarterly-updated dashboard that provides strategic visibility into the client’s evolving cybersecurity posture. It tracks progress across key areas including roadmap execution, security awareness training participation, dark web exposure findings, and internal and external vulnerability assessment results, along with remediation status. Where a mutually agreed cybersecurity framework has been identified, the dashboard includes high-level commentary on program alignment and maturity, offering directional insight rather than audit-level detail.
The dashboard also reflects the current status of policy updates, risk items, and other vCISO-led priorities, helping leadership focus on roadblocks and shifting areas of concern. Updated quarterly to support executive review sessions, the dashboard serves as a practical decision-making tool throughout the engagement. At year-end, a finalized version is delivered with historical data, trend highlights, and actionable insights to inform ongoing security planning.
Deliverables: The client receives a PowerPoint-based Executive Dashboard updated quarterly, summarizing key elements of the cybersecurity program, including top 5 risk status, roadmap progress, policy update tracking, training engagement metrics, dark web exposure, and vulnerability assessment trends. The dashboard is provided as a PDF or shared report following each quarterly review meeting, offering leadership a clear and actionable view of program health and priorities.
Each quarter, clients participate in a structured review session centered around the Executive Dashboard. These meetings provide an opportunity to evaluate progress, recalibrate priorities, and maintain executive-level visibility into the organization’s evolving cybersecurity posture. The dashboard walkthrough covers key areas such as roadmap execution, dark web monitoring activity, security awareness training participation and impact, policy update statuses, and findings from internal and external vulnerability assessments.
These reviews ensure continued alignment between security efforts, business objectives, and regulatory expectations.
Deliverables: The client receives a quarterly virtual review session led by the vCISO, focused on presenting the updated Executive Dashboard, discussing changes in risk status and roadmap progress, and aligning on upcoming security priorities. Onsite meetings may be available upon request and will incur additional costs, including travel.
Provide guidance on security awareness training strategy, helping clients tailor content to their specific risks, regulatory obligations, and user roles. Advise on phishing simulation strategy, testing cadence, user segmentation, and performance metrics, to maximize relevance and impact. Support interpretation of user engagement and outcomes, offering recommendations to refine future campaigns. This advisory approach helps strengthen user behavior, reduce human risk, and improve client’s overall security awareness program effectiveness. The SAT platform trainings and phishing campaigns will run as they have in the past, vCISO’s focus will be on the interpretation of the results.
Deliverables: The client receives quarterly guidance integrated into the Executive Dashboard on awareness campaign content, results and improvement opportunities. The vCISO reviews available metrics (e.g. phishing results, training completion rates, provides feedback and recommends adjustments to better align the training with risk areas and organizational goals.
Ongoing monitoring across multiple domains or key departments, with real-time alerts directed to the client’s IT team or ITS Service Desk. The vCISO’s role is to conduct a quarterly review of dark web findings during scheduled executive dashboard sessions. These reviews focus on exposure trends over time, high-risk user groups, repeated credential breaches, and areas needing policy or training reinforcement. Findings are contextualized within the broader risk picture and are tied to roadmap activities and the risk register. The vCISO provides strategic recommendations such as targeted awareness efforts, access reviews, or updates to password management policies. These insights feed into ongoing quarterly reporting and executive updates. The vCISO does not respond to alerts in real time but conducts a quarterly analysis and strategic review of the accumulated data during recurring meetings.
Deliverables: Executive Dashboard is updated with dark web findings; highlighting exposure trends, high-risk individuals or departments and actionable recommendations for risk mitigation, including access control updates, additional awareness training or corporate governance over where company email address can be used to create accounts.
The vCISO conducts a quarterly strategic review of the organization’s SIEM data, focusing on alert trends, evolving security threats, and missed opportunities for improvement. During this review, the vCISO identifies recurring alerts, gaps in visibility, and misalignments between the SOC’s outputs and the organization’s security priorities. The review results in a quarterly SOC/SIEM oversight report, which includes a visual trend analysis of alert volume, effectiveness, and key risk areas. Additionally, the vCISO provides actionable recommendations for improving alert tuning and identifying new areas for visibility, ensuring that the SOC is better aligned with the client’s business risk and security posture. The vCISO does not monitor real-time alerts, manage incident response, or coordinate actions with the SOC team; those functions still remain the responsibility of the SOC. This service brings high-level strategic analysis that helps leadership ensure their detection investments are delivering meaningful protection aligned with evolving business and threat needs.
Deliverables: The findings are incorporated into the quarterly executive dashboard to ensure strategic decision-making is informed by accurate and relevant security data.
The vCISO performs a quarterly strategic review of internal and external vulnerability data to highlight exposure trends, recurring risks, and areas that require sustained attention. By framing scan results in terms of business impact and risk priority, the vCISO provides leadership with a clear picture of the organization’s evolving vulnerability posture. This helps ensure executives understand which issues are most critical and how they relate to broader compliance or risk objectives.
The day-to-day responsibility for running scans and applying patches remains within operational teams, whether internal IT or delivered as part of our managed services. The vCISO’s role is to elevate those technical results into meaningful executive insight, ensuring that remediation activities are visibly aligned with business priorities and regulatory expectations. This ensures executives have clear visibility into vulnerability trends and remediation progress, with insights elevated to support informed decision-making at the leadership level.
Deliverables: Each quarter, the Executive Dashboard includes vulnerability trends, such as exposure growth or decline by severity and asset type. Recommendations for remediations are highlighted based on the priority which aligns with the business priorities and exposure footprint.
Support is included for up to two insurance questionnaires per year, provided each requires no more than two hours to complete. If a questionnaire exceeds this effort or if additional third-party documentation is requested (e.g., vendor assessments, client compliance forms), it will be scoped separately as a professional services project.
Deliverables: Completion of up to two standard insurance questionnaires (within the defined effort limit). Additional or time-intensive requests will be reviewed for separate scoping.
vCISO engagement is delivered as a 12-month contract, billed in equal Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) installments. This structure offers predictable budgeting and a consistent cadence of strategic cybersecurity leadership over the full course of the year.
Depending on the organization’s security maturity, compliance obligations, and strategic goals, clients can choose the service tier that best aligns with their needs. Each tier reflects a proportional level of effort and engagement; from foundational guidance to high-touch, executive-level partnership.
Our vCISO services are designed to deliver strategic cybersecurity leadership—not to replace or manage technical operations. To be effective, the vCISO relies on certain foundational security tools and processes already being in place, such as:
vCISO Cybersecure and vCISO Cybersecure – Regulatory Service Requirement: This service is available for Total IT and Amplify IT Enhanced Cybersecurity clients.