Virtual CISO (vCISO) Services

Virtual CISO services that ship.Virtual CISO services that ship.

Practitioner-led virtual CISO services for teams that need senior security leadership without the full-time hire.Virtual CISO services from a practitioner-led firm. Compliance readiness, penetration testing, and embedded security leadership for SMBs, growth-stage startups, and established teams that need senior firepower without the long hiring cycle.

  • Senior practitioner on every engagement
  • Advisory, managed, or embedded ownership
  • Month-to-month, cancel with 30 days notice

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Practitioner-led.
CISSP · OSCP · CREST

Pittsburgh-based.
Clients nationwide.

Framework-agnostic.
SOC 2 · ISO 27001

Month-to-month.
Cancel anytime.

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How we engage

How a vCISO partnership runs.

Engagements vary in scope and duration. The working rhythm stays consistent: threat-informed discovery in parallel with offensive testing, remediation and policy work shipped alongside your team, and recurring briefings for leadership.

Engagement phases

Kickoff

At the start of any engagement we confirm scope, get access, and agree on the two or three priorities that need to land first. Scope evolves as we go.

Discovery and offensive testing

Threat-informed assessment runs in parallel with real offensive testing. We rerun this work as scope expands or new systems land in production.

More engagement phases

Hands-on execution

Recurring sessions where remediation gets shipped, policies get authored, and customer security questionnaires get answered. Not advice. Implementation.

Leadership briefings

Board-grade briefings on cadence. You keep the materials for your board pack. Updates evolve with the program as priorities shift.

What we deliver

Audit-ready, attacker-tested.

Compliance work and offensive testing are usually two firms with two contracts. We run both inside one engagement, so the controls we implement reflect what an attacker would actually try.

Framework-native compliance

SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC, NIST CSF. We run all of them. Most engagements start with SOC 2; frameworks stack cleanly when customer contracts require more.

Attacker-eyed security

Technical validation tied to the engagement roadmap. Continuous attack surface monitoring when in scope. Findings get prioritized by exploitability, not by CVSS severity rating.

What a retainer actually covers.

Security programs are continuous, not one-off. The ownership level changes by engagement, and the scope shifts as your program matures, but the working areas below stay connected. It is the full scope of our virtual CISO services, whether you call it a vCISO or a fractional CISO.

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Policy authoring + access reviews

Real policies that match how your team actually operates. Quarterly access reviews with signed attestations from each system owner.

Vendor risk + customer questionnaires + trust center

Vendor inventory, tiering, and ongoing risk monitoring. Customer security questionnaires answered. Trust center kept current.

Audit support + evidence management

Auditor walkthroughs, control design defense, evidence curated across the audit window. We sit the meetings with you, not hand off a binder.

Vulnerability scanning + attack surface management

Continuous scanning that catches net-new exposures between pentests. Recurring authenticated scans on internal infra.

Endpoint and identity advisory

MDM and endpoint hardening. Identity provider audit, SSO and MFA enforcement, privileged access reviews.

Incident response + tabletops

Runbooks for the most likely scenarios. Annual tabletop with engineering and leadership.

Strategic roadmap + board briefings

Threat-informed 12-month roadmap. Board-grade briefings on cadence. Updates evolve with the program.

Pricing

Advise, manage, or embed.

Choose the level of ownership your team needs. Every option is senior-led and month to month, from strategic guidance to hands-on security leadership. See the full vCISO cost guide for where these rates sit in the wider market.

vCISO engagement pricing

Save 15% with annual billing

Your team executes. We guide.

Advisory vCISO
Senior direction for teams that can run the work internally but need an experienced security leader to set priorities and review decisions.
$3,000
Per month · billed monthly
Book a discovery call
  • Monthly security and risk review
  • 12-month security roadmap
  • Policy and control review
  • Compliance and audit guidance
  • Executive-ready recommendations
  • Email access with a 48-hour response SLA
Recommended

We manage the program.

Managed vCISO
Ongoing ownership of the security and compliance program for teams that need the work managed, not another list of recommendations.
$5,000
Per month · billed monthly
Book a discovery call
  • Everything in Advisory, plus:
  • Biweekly working sessions
  • Policy authoring and evidence management
  • Compliance platform administration
  • Audit coordination and questionnaire response
  • Risk register, tabletop, and executive reporting

We embed and execute.

Embedded vCISO
Hands-on security leadership for complex programs, tight audit timelines, M&A, or teams that need a security leader inside the operating cadence.
From$10,000
Per month · billed monthly
Book a discovery call
  • Everything in Managed, plus:
  • Weekly leadership and engineering cadence
  • Hands-on remediation and control implementation
  • Multi-framework and audit fieldwork leadership
  • Board, investor, and customer security briefings
  • Incident leadership with same-day response

Monthly billing remains month to month. Annual billing is one prepaid invoice with a 15% discount; cancel with 30 days notice and the unused prepaid balance is refunded on a prorated basis. Final scope depends on your environment, frameworks, and response expectations.

Frequently asked

What buyers ask first.

The short answers to the questions that come up on every discovery call. The full set is on the FAQ page.

See all 34 questions

Ready when you are

Your next move starts with a 30 minute call.

If vCISO.com is not a fit, we will say so and point you toward someone who is. If we are, we will identify the right ownership level and scope the engagement on the call.