Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these terms

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of vciso.com and any related products or services we provide. By accessing the site, submitting an inquiry, purchasing an engagement, or signing a Statement of Work, you agree to be bound by these Terms.

2. Who we are

Cyber Syndicate, LLC, doing business as vCISO.com ("vCISO.com", "we", "us", "our"), is a Pennsylvania-based limited liability company providing focused security projects and ongoing virtual CISO program-ownership services. Contact: info@vciso.com.

3. Engagements and Statements of Work

Every consulting engagement runs under a written Statement of Work (SOW) signed by both parties. The SOW controls scope, deliverables, fees, payment schedule, term, and termination. To the extent the SOW conflicts with these Terms, the SOW governs the engagement.

4. Fees and payment

Focused projects may use fixed-fee, milestone, or capped pricing when the boundaries support it. Ongoing program-ownership engagements are generally billed monthly. Every fee, payment schedule, assumption, and expense treatment is stated in the applicable SOW.

Your signed SOW controls the price, scope, and billing schedule for your engagement. Existing client pricing remains governed by the SOW in effect for that client unless both parties agree to a change in writing.

Late payments more than 30 days past due may suspend ongoing services until current. We do not charge late fees for first occurrences.

5. Cancellation and refunds

Termination, notice, and any refund terms are stated in the applicable SOW. There are no autorenewing multi-year SOWs unless both parties expressly agree otherwise in writing.

Fees already paid are refundable only as stated in the applicable SOW. If an engagement ends, any final invoice or refund is calculated against the termination and billing terms in that SOW.

6. Intellectual property

Deliverables produced specifically for you under an SOW (policies, gap analyses, pentest reports, board decks, runbooks) are licensed to you for unrestricted internal use upon payment. We retain ownership of our pre-existing methodologies, templates, frameworks, and tooling.

We may use anonymized engagement details (industry, size band, frameworks, generic outcomes) in case studies, marketing, or training materials. Anything that could reasonably identify you, your customers, or your systems is excluded unless explicitly authorized in writing.

7. Confidentiality

We sign your NDA on first call as standard practice. Absent a separate NDA, all non-public information shared during an engagement is treated as confidential and used only to perform the work, retained per the Privacy Policy, and disclosed only to subprocessors bound by equivalent confidentiality.

8. Insurance

Cyber Syndicate, LLC dba vCISO.com carries professional liability and errors and omissions insurance sized for growth-stage engagements. Coverage certificates are available on request during procurement review.

9. Limitations of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Cyber Syndicate, LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising out of or related to the services. Our aggregate liability for any claim is capped at the fees paid for the specific engagement giving rise to the claim. Nothing in this section limits liability for fraud or willful misconduct.

Security consulting reduces risk; it does not eliminate it. We do not guarantee that any framework certification will issue, that any audit will pass, or that any system will be free of vulnerabilities or successful attacks.

10. No professional or legal advice

Content on the site (blog posts, scorecards, FAQs, landing pages) is informational and reflects our practitioner experience. It does not constitute legal advice, regulatory advice, or a substitute for engagement-specific counsel. Engagements run under SOW provide tailored recommendations and are the right path for decisions that affect your business.

11. Acceptable use of the site

You agree not to use the site to:

• Violate applicable laws or regulations.
• Submit forms with knowingly false information or with the intent to abuse our systems.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any non-public area of the site or any of our systems.
• Disrupt, overload, or impair the site (e.g., automated scraping at scale, denial-of-service traffic).
• Use the site to harass, defame, or impersonate others.

Good-faith security research is welcome. Email security@vciso.com before testing any non-public surface. We will respond within one business day.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms. Material changes will be announced via the site and will update the "effective date" at the top. Continued use of the site after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms. Engagements already running under signed SOWs continue under the Terms in effect at the time of signing unless an amendment is mutually agreed.

13. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising under these Terms is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms: info@vciso.com. Security disclosures: security@vciso.com.