By Amos Aesoph, Xigent CISO
Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (vCISO) is a relatively new concept in the field of information security. It involves hiring an experienced information security professional on a contractual basis to provide strategic and operational security leadership to an organization. The vCISO service is provided by a third-party organization specializing in information security.
Hiring a full-time Chief Information Security Officer can be expensive, especially for small and medium-sized organizations. The cost of an employee includes salary, benefits, training, and professional development. These investments can add up quickly and put a significant strain on an organization’s budget. A vCISO service, on the other hand, is a cost-effective solution that eliminates the need for a full-time employee. With a vCISO service, organizations only pay for the services they require, and can scale them as needed. This provides a flexible, affordable solution to meet information security needs.
Information security is a complex field that requires specialized knowledge and skills. A vCISO service provides full access to a team of experts who have a deep understanding of information security best practices and can provide guidance on how to implement them. This can be leveraged to help businesses meet their information security objectives more efficiently while having access to experts they would not otherwise have.
Businesses can scale their vCISO services depending on their evolving security needs. This is useful for organizations that are undergoing rapid growth or are dealing with a security incident.
A vCISO service can be tailored to meet the specific needs of any organization. This means they can adjust their vCISO services as their security objectives change over time.
Hiring a vCISO can provide an objective view of your cybersecurity program. This removes negative human influences such as internal politics or the status of organizational relationships getting in the way of achieving security goals and team cohesion.
By leveraging the expertise of a vCISO service, organizations can stay ahead of the ever-evolving threat landscape and ensure that their information assets are secure while providing a cost-effective, scalable, flexible, and expert solution to organizations looking to improve their information security posture.
SecurPath includes a structured process organizing the range of activities that encompass your cybersecurity program. Activities include establishing your security goal based on the risks of the business, assessing current security capabilities against the goal and industry standards, developing a roadmap and plan to address the gaps, implementing remediation actions to the plan, as well as maintaining the improved security capabilities and evolving the program over time as needed. The SecurPath methodology brings these activities together in a coordinated approach to delivery and maintain desired security outcomes.