The Complete Guide to vCISO (virtual Chief Information Security Officer) Services - Riela Cyber (2024)

Every company that uses digital assets and data should have a cyber security and data protection strategy (for GDPR compliance). Data is increasingly becoming one of the most valuable company assets industry-wide, so securing data and sensitive information is no longer optional.

However, we also live in an increasingly busy and interconnected world where we don’t have time to fully consider the implications of a weak security framework. With limited resources, we often also have other priorities and need different resources before we can think of hiring a specialist information security officer. Companies need sales, marketing, finance and operations staff to grow…

This is where the vCISO comes in. As a ‘virtual’ Chief Information Security Officer, a vCISO is essentially a long-term outsourced consultant, or team of consultants, who work with you to improve your cyber security posture across all business teams and departments. The vCISO will often work closely with the in-house Data Protection Officer (DPO) to ensure that cyber security and data compliance strategies are aligned.

A vCISO liaises with the HR, IT, Finance and Operations departments to understand the residual risks within the organisation and how to manage and mitigate any identified risks.

The vCISO will usually ask:

• Do you have a full asset register of all IT systems along with their current OS and patch status?
• Do you segregate and restrict access based on least privilege or roles (e.g. by division, user/admin, etc.)?
• Does your disaster recovery include recovering from a cybercrime event (e.g. losing access to all data, emails, etc.)?
• Is your GDPR sensitive data sufficiently encrypted, restricted and secured?
• Do you know the impact on your business if your confidential and/or customer data was leaked publicly?
• Do you obtain regular independent verification that your information security setup is adequate and up-to-date?
• Are you monitoring all security events, would you know if a malicious actor has gained access to your systems?

By understanding and quantifying the risks facing an organisation, a vCISO can develop a strategy unique to the bespoke business needs. This strategy should follow the industry-standardNIST frameworkto improve the businesses overall cyber security posture that fits into the five categories: identity, protect, detect, respond and recover.

Improving a NIST report through the help of a VCISO will often look something like this depending on the time and budget available (a good vCISO is usually flexible here):

Riela’s vCISO is a retainer or fixed fee-based relationship that works around your needs. We often start with a higher, more focused engagement to make sure we immerse ourselves in your organisation while over the long-term it will be less intensive once we have developed the strategy and action points. We usually recommend budgeting for £2,000 to start while the cost often reduces over time to around £1,500-1,000 per month.

Our vCISO service can either work with our SOC services or be completely independent of any of our other services. A vCISO is responsible for designing and recommending the best solution for the client.

We don’t ask our clients to just trust our word, we also offer our vCISO clients independent third-party verification through an annual IASME accreditation.

Discover more about our vCISO services here or fill out this form today to get in touch with our Cyber Engineers directly: