Cybersecurity Strategy & GRC
Someone finally owns your security program.
Our virtual CISO services give you a senior security leader who sets the priorities, runs the program between audits, and answers to your board. No full-time hire, no more fire drills.
- Clear priorities. A ranked plan your team can act on, instead of a findings document nobody owns.
- No more audit fire drills. Evidence collected all year, so audit month stops consuming your engineers.
- Deals stop stalling. Customer security reviews and questionnaires answered without pulling your team off product.
Free vCISO Consultation
Talk with a virtual CISO.
30 minutes with a senior practitioner. No sales engineer, no obligation.
If two of these sound familiar, you have a leadership gap.
Work happens, but no senior person owns the priorities or answers when a customer asks who is accountable.
Questionnaires are now part of your sales cycle, and every one pulls engineers off the roadmap.
SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or CMMC moved from "someday" to a clause with a date attached.
Evidence gets assembled in the four weeks before the window instead of collected as the year goes.
They want top risks, progress, and where the money should go, not a vulnerability scan on a slide.
They are good at tickets and tooling. Strategy, governance, and audit ownership were never in scope.
You are hiring a person, not a portal.
A senior practitioner leads your engagement and stays on it. You are not handed to a junior analyst after the sale, and you are not filing tickets into a queue. Specialists come in where the work needs depth, and your lead stays accountable the whole way.
We work in defense and regulated environments where the evidence bar is highest, which is why commercial frameworks tend to go smoothly for our clients.
We put our money on the line. Almost nobody else will.
Three written commitments in every engagement, at no additional cost. Contract language, not marketing language.
Complete the corrective actions we identify. If you still do not pass, you get a refundable credit of up to $10,000.
Book a Free vCISO ConsultationWe start work within 24 hours of signing, or we credit you $1,000. No onboarding queue.
Cancel anytime with 30 days' notice. No cancellation fees. You stay because the work is good.
Guarantee terms are written into every engagement agreement. The Audit Victory Guarantee applies where the corrective actions we identify are completed as specified.
What our virtual CISO services cover.
Six working areas, and the artifact you keep from each one. Execution is where most vCISO engagements quietly stop.
A sequenced 12-month plan tied to your contracts and budget, plus a maintained risk register behind the accept, mitigate, or transfer decisions leadership signs.
Roles, decision rights, a standing cadence, and one short monthly report: top risks, what moved, what is blocked, what needs a decision.
Policies written to be followed, reviewed on a schedule, with owners and version history that survive questioning.
Framework mapping, evidence collected on a cadence, auditor coordination, and customer security reviews handled for you. We face the auditor directly.
Vendor due diligence with reassessment dates that do not lapse, plus a response plan with named roles, exercised before you need it.
Findings become owned work with dates and status. Stalled items get escalated, not re-reported next year. We also run your GRC platform, including Vanta.
Your first 90 days, then the cadence that holds.
A program does not fail in the strategy. It fails in the eleven months between the assessment and the audit.
We meet your team, your MSP, and your systems, assess current state against the frameworks that apply, and hand you a ranked backlog with owners. Quick wins start immediately.
The 12-month plan, the risk register, and one honest conversation with leadership about cost, sequence, and tradeoffs.
Working sessions, evidence collection, vendor and access reviews, and policy work move onto a repeating schedule. Then a next-quarter plan.
Backlog review with your team and MSP. Blockers cleared, next actions assigned.
Risk posture, progress against roadmap, and what needs a decision.
Re-rank risk against how the business changed, reset the next quarter.
Formal risk assessment, BC/DR exercises, and representing you through the audit.
What clients say about the partnership.
"After trying other less effective options, Nexeris enabled our company to rapidly meet DFARS 7012 compliance requirements for our cloud-based platform."
"Nexeris provides risk and compliance support for our growing IT services company. Nexeris is sharp in every respect, from technical competence to communication and presentation. Their work is excellent."
"Nexeris played a key role in helping us prepare for ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 certification under an aggressive timeline. They were proactive in coordinating with our external audit firm, and willing to meet tight deadlines without sacrificing quality."
"They performed our initial internal audit and walked us through both the Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits all the way to certification. Their practical, expert-led support turned a daunting process into a clear, achievable path."
"Nexeris helped our company to rapidly meet cybersecurity and compliance requirements during the due diligence process of a potential customer. The speed of delivery and quality of the work was exceptional."
A virtual CISO is not always the right answer.
If a full-time hire is what you need, we will tell you on the call.
| Dimension | Virtual CISO | Full-time CISO | Project consultant | MSP / MSSP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary role | Ongoing executive security leadership | Dedicated in-house executive | Advice or a defined deliverable | Day-to-day IT and security operations |
| Speed to start | Weeks, not an executive search | A recruiting and onboarding cycle | Fast for a scoped project | Depends on the provider |
| Cost model | Scoped monthly retainer | Salary, benefits, equity, overhead | Project or hourly | Recurring managed-service fee |
| Strategy, governance, board reporting | Core responsibility | Core responsibility | Rarely included | Not the primary function |
| Compliance leadership | Owns readiness and auditor coordination | Owned internally | Often a point-in-time gap assessment | Varies; often tooling and evidence only |
| Best fit | You need senior leadership without a full-time hire | Large org with a standing security team | One defined problem or assessment | You need ongoing IT and security operations |
Most of our clients run a vCISO and an MSP. The two are not competing. One sets direction and owns accountability, the other operates the environment.
We work where the requirements are strictest.
Questions about virtual CISO services.
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. You will get a straight answer, including when the answer is that you do not need us.
What does a virtual CISO actually do?
Sets the security strategy and roadmap, runs governance and the risk register, owns compliance and audit readiness, maintains the policy set, manages vendor risk and incident readiness, coordinates remediation with your team or MSP, and reports risk and progress to your leadership and board.
How is a vCISO different from a full-time CISO?
The function is the same; the employment model is not. A vCISO starts in weeks rather than months, costs a scoped retainer instead of salary plus benefits and equity, and can scale up or down as your needs change. A full-time CISO is the better answer once you have a standing security team to lead.
Is a virtual CISO the same as a fractional CISO?
In practice the terms are used interchangeably, along with outsourced CISO and CISO as a Service. "Fractional" emphasizes part-time capacity, "virtual" emphasizes the delivery model. What differs between providers is not the label. It is how much ownership comes with it.
How much do virtual CISO services cost?
Engagements are scoped monthly retainers rather than hourly. The number depends on company size and complexity, how many frameworks apply, your starting maturity, the cadence and level of ownership you want, how much we execute versus direct, and whether audit representation and incident leadership are in scope. We scope it on the first call rather than quoting blind.
How quickly can we start, and what happens first?
We start work within 24 hours of signing. Discovery runs in the first weeks, a ranked backlog with owners lands inside the first month, and your roadmap plus the first executive readout arrive by around day 45.
Will you work with our MSP or internal IT team?
Yes. Most of our clients have one or both. We set the security requirement and priority, your MSP or IT team implements it inside your environment, and we validate the result and carry it into evidence. We do not replace them.
Who actually performs the work on our engagement?
A senior practitioner leads your engagement and stays on it. You are not handed to a junior analyst after the sale. Specialists are pulled in where the work calls for depth, such as a framework-specific audit or a technical assessment, and your lead stays accountable throughout.
Can you manage our GRC platform and represent us to auditors?
Yes to both. We configure integrations, validate that automated tests reflect your actual production environment, and clear failing checks, so the posture shown is accurate rather than merely green. We also act as your security representative through the audit, handling requests, compiling artifacts, and answering technical questions. The same applies to customer security reviews.
Which compliance frameworks can you support?
CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, NIST CSF, DFARS, SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA are the ones we work in most. Defense and regulated environments set the hardest evidence bar, which is why the commercial frameworks tend to go smoothly for our clients.
Thirty minutes. A straight answer.
Bring your customer questionnaire, your contract language, or the audit date somebody just handed you. You talk to a senior practitioner, not a sales engineer.
- An honest read on where your program actually stands
- Which frameworks apply to you and which do not
- A realistic timeline worked backward from your deadline
- What you can run in-house and what is worth paying for
