Bringing top-tier security experts to your company
Assess your existing information security programs and develop, implement and manage customized information security protocols
Virtual CISO
Virtual Chief Information Security Officer
What is a Virtual CISO?
Top-tier security experts to guide your security program
Virtual 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.
How can we help?
Get one of our vCISO’s to help build out your security program in the most cost-effective, efficient and highest-impact fashion.
CONTACT USFACT: FRSecure’s Virtual CISO System
FACT, or Functional, Accurate, and Comprehensive Trust system, 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.
vCISO Program Steps
01.
Onboarding Assessment
Starting with a high-level risk assessment, your program and your analyst will get a chance to get to know each other. This initial meeting will set a baseline and help determine the full risk assessment level.
02.
Ramp-Up Period
This time will be used to prepare you for your full risk assessment. We’ll assist you in activities such as reviewing patch management, coaching policies, putting together an asset management approach, or having weekly working sessions.
03.
Full Risk Assessment
The assessment level determined in the onboarding assessment will be conducted here. With the help of your FRSecure analyst, this assessment will determine administrative, physical, internal technical, and external technical risk.
04.
vCISO Engagement
A roadmap will be created, focusing on the activities to accomplish over the next 12-18 months, as well as setting ongoing meeting cadences that meet your organizations needs and capacity.
"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 FRSecure helped us strengten our policies and operating procedures to frame us in the best light with our customers. 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."
CTO
CaringBridge
Virtual CISO FAQ
vCISO services can cost as little as $35k per year and as much as $250k per year. Our typical vCISO engagements decrease in cost over time as our client’s security programs go into “maintenance mode,” where the constant building effort is no longer a factor.
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.
CISO as a service is another name for virtual CISO. A provider like FRSecure assigns organizations a proven and certified information security professional to help organizations protect sensitive information and achieve related business goals along the way.
The truth is, CISOs are expensive. Most of them cost between $250k and $350k when you factor in salaries and benefits. That’s not always easy for small- and medium-sized businesses to cover.
FRSecure’s vCISO offering is 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
- Penetration testing
- Social engineering
- Vulnerability assessments
- Risk assessment
- And much, much more.
Lower Cost Over Time
A typical vCISO engagement is between $35k and $250k annually and depending on your business’s size and needs. But, most of the work is preliminary, so the involvement (and therefore the cost) 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 FRSecure, 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 FRSecure 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 Unique Approach
Why work with FRSecure?
Expertise
FRSecure has been in business for over 10 years, and our team has more than 300 years of combined experience working in information security and boasts 30 different kinds of certifications. When it comes to growing a security program through a vCISO, you have the benefit of experience in your corner.
Mission
Our mission at FRSecure 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 approach 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 assessent to inform the vCISO team what your strengths and weaknesses are, and then apply industry best practices to provide next steps that’ll help you make improvments.
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 virtual CISO team can provide unbiased recommendations that will actually make a dramatic impact to the way you do security. Our vCISO team works hard to be a partner—collaborating with and educating your team every step of the way.
"The higher level of security we’ve achieved with their guidance has allowed our business to grow immensely."
Security Administrator
Premier Printing Company
Virtual CISO vs Contractor vs CISO
The benefits our vCISO service provides over alternative options
FRSecure vCISO
- Verifiable Industry Experience
- Expert Advisor
- Strategic Security Planning
- Flexible Investment
- Guaranteed Objectivity
- No Training & Certification Costs
- Annual Risk Assessment
- Objective Measurable Performance
- Access to a Team of Experts
- No Turnover
- Wide-range of Specialized Expertise
Independent Contractor
- Verifiable Industry Experience
- Expert Advisor
- Strategic Security Planning
- Flexible Investment
- Guaranteed Objectivity
- No Training & Certification Costs
- Annual Risk Assessment
- Objective Measurable Performance
- Access to a Team of Experts
- No Turnover
- Wide-range of Specialized Expertise
Full-Time CISO
- Verifiable Industry Experience
- Expert Advisor
- Strategic Security Planning
- Flexible Investment
- Guaranteed Objectivity
- No Training & Certification Costs
- Annual Risk Assessment
- Objective Measurable Performance
- Access to a Team of Experts
- No Turnover
- Wide-range of Specialized Expertise
“FRSecure wants to make sure that they give you exactly what you need, and that’s the primary reason that I went back to them. They really offer you very personal instruction and guidance.”
Senior IS Officer
First National Minnesota Bank
