Buyer’s Guide: 5 Key Questions for Evaluating vCISO Services

As the threat landscape continues to evolve, it’s important for organizations to have a solid cybersecurity strategy. And that starts at the top, ideally with a CISO, who is solely focused on managing the security risks to their organization. The problem is, CISO positions can be difficult to fill. With a significant cybersecurity talent shortage plaguing organizations of all sizes, CISOs are hard to find, and if you do find one, they can require salaries outside of your organization’s budget.  

A vCISO can help fill the gap 

Thankfully, there are effective ways to navigate the challenges of not having a full-time CISO within your organization. One is outsourcing a virtual CISO (also called vCISO or executive advisory services). A vCISO is a highly skilled security executive who typically works with your business remotely as a part-time contractor or on-demand consultant for a set number of weekly hours. These security experts assume many of the same responsibilities as a full-time CISO in terms of vision, guidance and architecting of the overall security strategy. 

Types of services a vCISO provides 

vCISOs can range in the types of services they provide depending on their expertise and/or the organization they work for. However, here’s a sampling of some of the functions they can help you with: 

• Setting out a roadmap that helps your business get to a position where it better manages information security risks 
• Assessing and evaluating the risks of any third parties with access to your company’s data 
• Reviewing and setting recommendations for the development of your security architecture in line with the risks your business faces 

• Helping to optimize your security tech stack so that there isn’t significant overlap between the features and functions of various tools and platforms 
• Maintaining compliance with any regulations governing how your business protects and uses certain kinds of information 

How to find the right vCISO services for your organization 

If you’ve decided that a vCISO is what your organization needs to stay on top of the latest threats, the next step is to determine the right vCISO offering for your needs. To help, we’ve created this practical guide, which gives you a list of the questions you should ask to make sure you have your bases covered.  

Download the buyer’s guide today >