vCISO: Why Your Company Needs One

If your organization focuses on a customer base that has compliance or regulations, you have most likely heard of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) role and potentially what they do. CISO’s is a senior level executive role that establishes and maintains an organizations security vision, information security strategy, and all the operational programs to achieve those goals. Larger organizations have a CISO on staff that their focus is to meet those goals while small and medium sized organizations do not have resources to hire a dedicated executive resource. Generally, the organization tasks the Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or Director with the responsibility. Many CIO’s/CTO’s view this additional responsibility as a burden and do not have the resources or bandwidth to meet the goals set forth, so how does an organization meet requirements with constrained resources? Enter virtual CISO (vCISO) offerings from information security companies that focus directly on removing this burden.

How does vCISO solve the resource problem faced by organizations today? What is the responsibility of this outsourced role?  Leveraging an outside company to provide compliance, governance, and security guidance removes the overhead of hiring full time staff and building a cybersecurity department. It provides an instant on benefit for businesses trying to meet those requirements. Overall, this role is responsible for an organization’s security operations, cyber intelligence, information security risk, security architecture, and compliance. Not many smaller organizations can afford or even find talent to fill those needs. In 2018 only 70% of large enterprise companies had a CISO on staff. Most of larger and medium sized companies outsource this role already today. 

The majority of companies that are small and medium sized, do not need a full time CISO in your organization, but do need someone that can fill these responsibilities. vCISO services fills those needs and does it in a full or part time basis depending on the needs of the business. Companies like ours provides vCISO services to companies of all sizes and every company should have a resource that has expertise in cybersecurity to help them navigate the ever-changing technology, compliance, governance, privacy, and cyber threats. 

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