Virtual CISO services from a practitioner-led firm.
One firm, one engagement: SOC 2 readiness, a real penetration test, and ongoing vCISO leadership. The combination most consultants will not bundle.
Senior security leadership for SaaS, healthtech, fintech, and regulated SMB. Also called fractional CISO or CISO-as-a-Service. We run SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and CMMC readiness, own your vendor risk program, lead incident response, and brief your board. Month-to-month. No associates. No annual contracts.
- SOC 2 readiness in 8 to 12 weeks
- Pentest included on every Sprint
- Month-to-month retainer, no annual contract
- Senior practitioner on every engagement, not associates
What virtual CISO services actually include.
Most vCISO firms scope their work narrowly, sell SOC 2 readiness, and call it done. We run the full program a senior CISO would run, sized to the company that hires us. Six work areas, owned end to end.
Strategic security roadmap
A 12-month, threat-informed roadmap ranked by ROI and tied to actual business drivers: your next audit date, a customer contract clause, a board ask, or pending M&A diligence. Initiatives are scored by expected loss reduction per dollar spent, not by which MITRE ATT&CK column is longest.
Compliance readiness
SOC 2 Type I and Type II, ISO 27001:2022, HIPAA, PCI DSS 4.0, CMMC Level 2, NIST CSF 2.0. We have worked with Schellman, A-LIGN, BARR, Prescient, and KirkpatrickPrice. Gap assessments are tied to production evidence your auditor can pull from Okta, AWS, GitHub, and your EDR. Not policy PDFs that rot in Drive.
Policy authoring and governance
Information security, access management, secure SDLC, incident response, vendor management, BCP and disaster recovery. Written to match how your team actually operates so audit evidence requests do not turn your engineering lead into a full-time compliance admin. Versioned, review-scheduled, and tied to the controls they support.
Vendor and third-party risk
Vendor inventory, tiering by data access, contractual review, and ongoing monitoring. We handle inbound security questionnaires end to end: Vanta AutoShare, SecurityScorecard, Whistic, OneTrust, Drata Trust Center, plus the ad-hoc PDF from the six-figure contract that is somehow still holding up your procurement cycle.
Board and investor briefings
Quarterly board presentations and investor diligence support in language your CFO, CRO, and lead director all understand. Every metric ties to a material risk with a dollar impact, an owner, and a remediation ETA. The deck is yours to reuse in your next raise or annual renewal conversation.
Incident response leadership
Pre-written runbooks, rostered on-call, semi-annual tabletop exercises covering real scenarios: credential compromise, ransomware on an engineering laptop, S3 bucket exposure, vendor breach notification. On day zero, you call us. You do not spend forty-five minutes reading someone else's runbook template.
What is a virtual CISO, and when does a company need one?
A virtual CISO (sometimes called a fractional CISO or CISO-as-a-service) is a senior security leader engaged on a retainer basis instead of as a full-time hire. The role is the same as a Chief Information Security Officer at any other company: own the security strategy, run the compliance program, author policy, lead incident response, brief the board, and manage vendor risk. The difference is the contract.
A full-time CISO costs $250K to $400K loaded, takes 3 to 6 months to recruit, and is overqualified for most companies under 250 employees. A virtual CISO covers the same scope at a fraction of the cost, starts in 2 to 4 weeks, and scales up or down as the company grows. For most growth-stage teams, a vCISO is the right answer until headcount or risk profile justifies a full-time hire.
The five most common triggers for hiring a vCISO:
- A compliance audit is on the calendar.SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or PCI DSS. Your auditor needs a named security owner, documented controls, and evidence that ties to production. A vCISO gets you ready and signs the management representation letter.
- An enterprise deal is blocked on a security questionnaire.Your buyer's infosec team sends a 200-question response form, expects a SOC 2, and wants to talk to your CISO. A vCISO answers the questionnaire in days, takes the call, and gets the deal unstuck.
- A board or investor asks for a documented security program.Your lead director, audit committee, or post-Series-B investors want to see a roadmap, risk register, and quarterly reporting. A vCISO builds it and presents it.
- A security incident exposed how thin the program really is.Credential compromise, ransomware, an exposed S3 bucket, a vendor breach. The 24 hours after the incident reveals whether a security program exists or just a policy folder. A vCISO leads the response and rebuilds the program in the aftermath.
- You are hiring a full-time CISO and need to bridge the gap.Senior CISO searches take 6 to 9 months. A vCISO covers the role in the meantime and helps interview the eventual full-time hire. Many of our retainer engagements end this way: we write the job description, sit in on finalist interviews, and hand off to the full-time hire on day one.
Two ways to engage. Both lead to the same place.
Most virtual CISO firms only sell long-term retainers. We start most engagements with a productized 2-week Sprint so you can test fit before signing a retainer. The Sprint cost credits in full toward retainer if you continue.
SOC 2 Sprint
Two weeks. Gap analysis, policy inventory, light pentest, exec readout, and a scoped retainer proposal. The fastest way to see how we work without committing to a retainer.
- Kickoff call, scope confirmation
- SOC 2 gap analysis tied to production evidence
- Light pentest (8 to 12 hours)
- Policy gap inventory with templates
- Executive readout deck
- $2,500 credited toward month one of retainer
vCISO Retainer
Ongoing security leadership. Strategic vCISO at $5,000/mo. Embedded vCISO custom-scoped (Inquire). Founding cohort: 50% off Strategic for 12 months.
- Monthly strategy reviews and roadmap updates
- Policy authoring and ongoing governance
- Vendor risk reviews and questionnaire handling
- Quarterly board briefings
- Incident response leadership and tabletops
- 24-hour response SLA (Embedded), 48-hour (Strategic)
Every framework your customers ask about.
We run the full stack: SOC 2 for SaaS, HIPAA for healthtech, PCI DSS for payments, CMMC for defense contractors, ISO 27001 for European deals, and NIST CSF for regulated industries. Frameworks stack cleanly when one customer contract demands more than your existing attestation covers.
SOC 2 Type I and Type II
The default attestation for SaaS and B2B software companies. We run Type I in 8 to 12 weeks and Type II with a 3 to 6 month observation window. Trust Services Criteria mapped to production evidence. Auditor-matched policy language so you do not rework everything at fieldwork.
ISO 27001:2022
Required by European customers and larger enterprise buyers. Statement of Applicability, risk treatment plan, and Annex A control selection done in parallel with your SOC 2 when both are in scope. Full certification in 4 to 9 months depending on surface area.
HIPAA Security Rule
Covered entity and business associate readiness. Administrative, physical, and technical safeguards mapped end to end. Breach notification playbook, BAA library, and PHI data-flow diagrams built from your actual architecture, not a generic template.
PCI DSS 4.0
Self-assessment questionnaires (SAQ-A through SAQ-D) and full ROC scope. We work alongside your QSA to minimize scope and design cardholder data flows that keep you in the lowest-burden SAQ your business model can justify.
CMMC Level 2
For defense contractors and sub-primes under DFARS 252.204-7012. Pre-assessment against the 110 NIST SP 800-171 controls, System Security Plan authoring, POA&M tracking. We prep you for a C3PAO assessment without an 18-month consultancy engagement.
NIST CSF 2.0
Risk-based assessment against the six functions: Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover. Useful when a customer contract references NIST or when you need a common framework to align board-level risk reporting with engineering-level control design.
What we do that other vCISO firms do not.
The vCISO market is crowded. Most firms recycle the same paper-only readiness deck and bill against partner rate cards. Four things separate us in practice.
01
Pentest included on every Sprint
Most vCISO firms will not touch your application. Either they subcontract pentests at extra cost, or they skip them entirely because the founder is a paper-only consultant. We run pentests in-house. The 2-week Sprint includes 8 to 12 hours of focused offensive work on your auth flow, API, and common web vulnerabilities. Findings tie directly into the security roadmap. This is the single biggest reason buyers choose us.
02
Named principals, not associates
When a Big 4 firm sends the partner to close and the junior to do the work, you pay for the partner and get the junior. We run the opposite playbook. Every retainer client has a senior practitioner named on the engagement, doing the work directly. No bait and switch. No layered staffing. The person on the kickoff call is the person reviewing your policies in week six.
03
Month-to-month, no annual contract
Most consulting firms require 6 to 12 month commitments and lock you into a tier you may not need. Every retainer here is month-to-month with 30 days notice to cancel. If we are not earning the retainer in a given month, you should not pay it. The Founding Cohort 12-month founder rate is a discount commitment from us, not a contract obligation from you: cancellation rules remain the same.
04
We read past compliance theater
Our founder is a Carnegie Mellon-trained senior pentester with over a decade in offensive security and security program leadership. We can tell within an hour whether a Vanta dashboard reflects real operating controls or aspirational templates someone bought. The policies we write match how engineering teams actually operate. The pentest we run finds real bugs. The board briefings we deliver translate technical reality into business risk, not the other way around. We implement, we do not audit.
Where vCISO services land hardest.
Every industry has its own buyer questionnaire, its own auditor temperament, its own threat model. Four industries where our practitioner-led approach pays off the fastest.
vCISO for SaaS
The default fit. B2B software companies closing their first SOC 2 and answering enterprise security questionnaires. Typical pattern: a growth-stage SaaS company surfaces a missing MFA configuration during a Sprint, fixes it in week two, and closes a $400K enterprise deal three weeks later because the buyer's security team had flagged it in their procurement review.
vCISO for healthtech
HIPAA covered entities and business associates. Telehealth platforms, EHR integrations, clinical SaaS, life sciences vendors with PHI access. Typical pattern: a healthtech startup pursuing HIPAA compliance has their auditor cut findings from 11 to 2 between draft and final after we run gap analysis with their engineering team in week one and ship policy fixes in week two.
vCISO for fintech
Payment platforms, lending products, banking-adjacent SaaS, embedded finance. PCI DSS scope and bank diligence are the friction. Typical pattern: a fintech Series B reduces security questionnaire turnaround from 3 weeks to 2 days by adopting our pre-written response playbook and standardizing their evidence collection through an existing compliance platform.
vCISO for regulated SMB
Defense contractors, govtech vendors, regulated industries with ad-hoc compliance demands. CMMC, FedRAMP-adjacent, NIST CSF. Typical pattern: a regulated SMB cuts their first vendor breach response from a 4-day fire drill to a 6-hour controlled containment after we run a tabletop exercise that surfaces the gaps in their on-call rotation and rebuilds the runbook.
What does a virtual CISO cost?
Industry-wide, virtual CISO services run $3,000 to $15,000 per month depending on engagement depth. Standalone projects (like a SOC 2 readiness Sprint) are typically $2,500 to $10,000 fixed-fee. Our published pricing:
SOC 2 Sprint
Two-week productized engagement. Pentest included. Credited toward retainer.
Start a SprintStrategic vCISO
Monthly security reviews, policy authoring, questionnaire support. 48-hour response SLA.
Book a discovery callEmbedded vCISO
Hands-on leadership. Weekly syncs, board briefings, on-call IR. Same-day response SLA.
Book a discovery call50% off retainer pricing for 12 months.
Our first 5 retainer clients lock in Strategic vCISO at $2,500/mo for a full 12 months (50% off the $5,000 list rate). Plus the SOC 2 Sprint at $500. Embedded vCISO is custom-scoped and negotiated case-by-case for cohort members. Trade: testimonial, case study rights, and willingness to take a reference call from future prospects. Year two reverts to list pricing.
Not ready to talk? Score your SOC 2 readiness.
Twenty questions, a scored PDF in your inbox, a realistic timeline to audit. Free.
Common questions about virtual CISO services.
What is a virtual CISO (vCISO)?
A virtual CISO is a senior security leader engaged on a fractional basis instead of full-time. The role covers what a full-time Chief Information Security Officer would: security strategy, compliance program ownership, policy authoring, vendor risk, board reporting, and incident response leadership. The difference is the contract: a vCISO is a retainer or fractional engagement, typically month-to-month, sized to the company that hires them. For most growth-stage companies, that means senior security leadership without the $250K to $400K annual cost of hiring a full-time CISO.
When does a company need virtual CISO services?
The most common triggers are: a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit on the calendar, an enterprise deal blocked on a security questionnaire, a board or investor asking for a documented security program, or a security incident that exposed how thin the program really is. Underneath every trigger is the same problem: the company has outgrown ad-hoc security and needs a senior owner who can build the program in 90 days, not 9 months. Virtual CISO services exist for exactly that gap.
How is vCISO different from a full-time CISO?
A full-time CISO is a 40-plus hour per week employee with full headcount, equity, and benefits. Total cost runs $250K to $400K loaded for a senior hire and 3 to 6 months to recruit. A vCISO works on a fractional retainer (typically 4 to 20 hours per week depending on tier), starts within 2 to 4 weeks, and is paid as a vendor invoice rather than payroll. For most companies under 250 employees, a vCISO is cheaper, faster to onboard, and senior enough to satisfy customer security reviews and board diligence. When a company outgrows the vCISO model, we help with the full-time CISO search.
How is vCISO different from compliance platforms like Vanta or Drata?
Compliance platforms automate evidence collection. They do not write your policies, run your incident response, sign your management representation letter, take your board call, or close the gaps the platform surfaces. A vCISO and a compliance platform work together: the platform tracks the evidence, the vCISO does the actual security work that produces the evidence in the first place. Most of our retainer clients use Vanta, Drata, or similar; we are the human program around the tool.
What does a virtual CISO actually do day to day?
It depends on the tier and the phase. Early in an engagement, most hours go to gap analysis, policy authoring, evidence cleanup, and customer questionnaire backlog. Mid-engagement, the work shifts to vendor risk reviews, control monitoring, security training rollout, and board prep. Steady state means quarterly board reporting, audit liaison, incident response leadership when something goes wrong, and ongoing strategic decisions. We share weekly status notes with retainer clients so the work is visible.
How much does virtual CISO cost?
Our published retainer is $5,000 per month for Strategic vCISO. Embedded vCISO is custom-scoped for higher-touch engagements and quoted on application. Standalone projects (for example, the SOC 2 Sprint at $2,500 or the 90-Day vCISO Foundation at $24,000) are flat-fee. The Founding Cohort offers 50% off the Strategic vCISO retainer for 12 months in exchange for a testimonial and case study rights; Embedded is negotiated case-by-case for cohort members. Industry-wide, virtual CISO services typically run $3,000 to $15,000 per month depending on engagement depth, company size, and regulatory complexity. Anyone quoting under $3,000 per month for senior advisory work is pricing for time, not for outcomes.
Can I cancel a vCISO retainer?
Yes. Every retainer is month-to-month with 30 days notice. No annual contracts, no minimums, no auto-renewal traps. If a vCISO is not earning their retainer in a given month, the client should not pay it. The only exception is the Founding Cohort 12-month founder rate, which is a discount commitment from us, not a contract obligation from you: cancellation rules remain the same.
Which compliance frameworks do you support?
SOC 2 Type I and Type II, ISO 27001:2022, HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules, PCI DSS 4.0 (SAQ-A through SAQ-D and full ROC scope), CMMC Level 2 for defense contractors, and NIST CSF 2.0. Most engagements start with SOC 2 because it is the default attestation for B2B SaaS. Frameworks stack cleanly when one customer contract demands more than your existing attestation covers.
Do your vCISO services include penetration testing?
Yes. Every SOC 2 Sprint includes a focused light pentest on your application. Embedded vCISO retainer clients get an annual full-scope pentest as part of the engagement. This is unusual for vCISO firms: most subcontract or skip the pentest entirely because the founder is a paper-only consultant. Our offensive security background means we run pentests in-house and tie findings directly into the security roadmap.
How quickly can a vCISO start?
A SOC 2 Sprint kicks off within 2 weeks of signing. Embedded retainer engagements typically start within 2 to 4 weeks. Compare to a full-time CISO hire (3 to 6 months) or a Big 4 consultancy engagement (6 to 8 weeks of contract negotiation alone). The speed is the point: most companies hire a vCISO because something is on fire or about to be.
Ready to talk?
Three ways in: start with a $2,500 Sprint, apply for a founding retainer slot at 50% off, or take the free 4-minute SOC 2 Readiness Scorecard if you want a snapshot before talking to anyone.