What is a virtual CISO
Top-tier security experts to guide your security program
A virtual CISO (sometimes called a fractional CISO) is a service designed to make top-tier security experts available to organizations who need security expertise and guidance. Our team of experts has decades of experience; building information security programs that work WITH business objectives and show measurable improvement to security posture.
Secure Shields Virtual CISO Program
An Secure Shield vCISO engagement is designed to meet security programs where they’re at. We start by going through an onboarding assessment to get an understanding of the maturity of your program. With that, we can provide initial remediation recommendations to address glaring concerns and prepare you for a more extensive risk assessment. Ultimately, your vCISO engages in a constant cycle of assessing and remediating—allowing you to meet your security goals.
How can we help?
Work with a Secure Shield vCISO or fractional CISO to help build and improve your security program in the ways that impact your business most.
Contact Us
Risk Assessments
Through a series of questionnaires and scans that we perform on your environment, we create a full assessment of your current risk level and cyber posture, compared to industry benchmarks. That also includes gap analysis of vulnerabilities and exploits.
Compliance Readiness
We identify which regulatory standards your organization needs to meet, then perform a thorough compliance readiness assessment. We find the gaps, prepare a plan to close them and manage the plan’s execution together with you.
Tailored Security Policies
We create a tailor-made set of easy-to-follow, actionable policies, adjusted to your specific needs, your IT environment and tools, relevant regulatory requirements and industry benchmarks.
Incident Response Plans
We create strategic remediation plans with prioritized tasks. Each task is explained in a clear and intuitive way, making it easy to follow and implement. And each task includes impact and criticality rate.
How Our vCISO Service Works
Full Risk Assessment
With the help of your Secure Shield analyst, this assessment will determine administrative, physical, internal, and external technical risk so that targeted improvements can be made.
Roadmap
A roadmap will be created based on the findings from your full risk assessment, then we will begin by focusing on the highest impact security objectives to improve your security posture and business as a whole.
Day to Day vCISO Operations
Your vCISO will be your security expert to ensure your organization stays on target and will be there to assist with coaching, policies, asset management, or wherever else your in-house team requires additional support.
“Since our industry is so highly regulated, we wanted to be sure our security was performing as well as it possibly could. We are subject to customer audits, and Secure Shield helped us strengthen our policies and operating procedures to frame us in the best light with our clients. There is a lot of depth to their background in information security and physical security. They know how to provide full coverage and give good suggestions to eliminate gaps.”
Colleen Lessmann
Health Director
Qwemtsin Health Society
Our Unique Approach
Benefits of working with Secure Shield
Expertise
Secure Shield has been in business for over 10 years, and our team has more than 150 years of combined experience working in information security and boasts 30 different kinds of certifications. When it comes to measuring security risk, you have the benefit of experience in your corner.
Mission
Our mission at Secure Shield is to fix the broken information security industry. Not only do we respond to incidents, but we also solve as many weaknesses as we can in your security environment. Being with organizations before, during, and after a breach is the only way we can truly improve their security and protect the sensitive information entrusted to them.
Style
Our style isn’t “cookie cutter.” We recognize that each organization is different, and every security program is at a different stage of maturity. We get to know your security program intimately, use an information security risk assessment to determine what your strengths and weaknesses are, and then apply industry best practices to provide next steps based on the findings.
Focus
Information security is all we do. We don’t do IT, sell hardware, or provide telco services. We only do security. Because of this, our team can provide unbiased recommendations that will actually make a dramatic impact to the way you do security. We work hard to be a partner—collaborating with and educating your team every step of the way.
Realize your security vision
Our vCISO services develop a roadmap, create plan of action, and implement changes. The end result: we help you bring your cybersecurity vision to reality.
The right policies
Our vCISO tools guide your organization through the creation of policies, strategic remediation plans and levels of protection tailored to your unique business and industry – ensuring you have the right controls in place to mitigate risk.
Maintain compliance
We conduct automated and continuous compliance readiness assessments, then create an actionable plan with a prioritized task list to achieve and maintain compliance, while tracking progress toward compliance goals.
Continuously manage cyber posture
Unlike one-time risk assessments that generate security posture and risk snapshots, our vCISO services continuously assess and update your real time security posture, risk level and compliance readiness.
Gain long-term visibility
We track and measure your security posture and risk level over time, identifying mission-critical trends and keeping you always in the know.
Questions?
Virtual CISO FAQs
What is CISO as a service
CISO as a service is another name for virtual CISO consulting services. A provider like Secure Shield assigns organizations a proven and certified information security professional to help organizations protect sensitive information and achieve related business goals along the way.
What does a Virtual CISO do?
A virtual CISO is an assigned resource with experience building and improving information security programs. Starting with a risk assessment, a vCISO first gets an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of an organization’s security program. Based on the results, the vCISO then works with executive leadership teams to understand goals, budget, and bandwidth—allowing them to provide actionable recommendations, or a roadmap, based on the business’s goals and the risk assessment’s findings. With the roadmap in place, they work with the organization’s internal security team to train staff and make the recommended improvements, improving the ability of the organization to protect its sensitive information and increase its operational efficiencies. Over time, they simply become a sounding board for the organization’s staff to bounce questions and challenges off of.
How much does a Virtual CISO cost?
Virtual CISO cost is based on several variables such as the size and complexity of your organization, the number of devices in your network, and estimated time spent working with you as a client. You should expect to spend $1500-$3000 or more per month based on these factors. This price includes annual assessments, road mapping, vulnerability scanning, consulting services, and access to portal software for tracking and communication purposes. Our typical virtual CISO cost less over time as our clients’ security programs go into “maintenance mode,” where the consistent building effort is no longer a factor.
What are the responsibilities of a vCISO
Secure Shield vCISO services are meant to be flexible in order to meet the needs of each of our clients. Engagements typically follow a cycle of assess, plan, and remediate.
Whether you need high-level guidance on a monthly or quarterly basis or need hands-on help several days per week, our vCISO’s will be able to build a solution for you.
Typical objectives of vCISO engagements include:
- Information security leadership and guidance
- Steering committee leadership or participation
- Security compliance management
- Security policy, process, and procedure development
- Incident response planning
- Security training and awareness
- Board and executive leadership presentations
- Security assessment
- Internal audit
- Vulnerability assessments
- Risk assessment
- And much, much more.
What are the benefits of a vCISO
Lower Cost Over Time
Virtual CISO cost can be expensive depending on your business’s size and needs. But, most of the work is preliminary, so the involvement (and therefore what a virtual CISO costs) decreases over time.
Extensive Industry Knowledge and Skill
Does your “security” person wear a ton of hats in the organization? It’s not uncommon for companies to assign security roles as a secondary function of an employee’s primary role. Because of this, they’re often not true experts.
vCISOs, especially those at Secure Shield, are highly skilled and certified experts with years of information security experience. A virtual CISO is going to be able to enhance the internal capabilities of your employees tasked with handling security through the techniques they’ve learned.
Limited Turnover
Let’s face it, the security job market is as competitive as ever. We have to worry about employees leaving anyway, but that only adds to it. With an Secure Shield vCISO, you equip your team with the expertise, methodologies, and resources to avoid losing a step—either as you work to hire a new CISO, or if you want our team to occupy that role.
Our Cybersecurity Frameworks
