Four Proven Tactics to Scale Your Advisory Services More Efficiently

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 5 August, 2025

Four Proven Tactics to Scale Your Advisory Services More Efficiently

If you already provide strategic security advisory services, you know the potential they hold: deeper client relationships, recurring revenue, strategic positioning, and, most importantly, delivering stronger and more resilient security that helps your clients protect what matters most.

Still, many providers face challenges in scaling these services effectively. Manual, time-consuming processes limit efficiency, upsell opportunities are often missed, new client acquisition can be inconsistent, and service packaging isn’t always optimized for repeatability and profitability.

This blog explores why many providers struggle to scale their ongoing advisory services effectively and outlines steps that can be taken to overcome these challenges.

The Pain Points Holding Many Service Providers Back

Even the most experienced providers can encounter roadblocks when trying to expand their strategic security services. These challenges are common realities in a fast-evolving market. Recognizing and addressing them can open the door to greater scale, profitability, and client impact.

Upsell Opportunities Are Missed

Your current clients are often the most accessible and valuable source of growth. Yet even providers with a strong advisory practice often overlook opportunities sitting within their current book of business. One-off project clients, such as those who engaged you for a HIPAA assessment, may benefit from additional offerings, like ongoing compliance support, executive reporting, or roadmap development.

Tapping into this opportunity begins by identifying where clients can benefit from expanded support and introducing structured, value-driven services that help them meet their broader security and business goals.

Services Aren’t Structured to Scale

Custom engagements can deliver value, but they also demand significant resources. Without a defined structure, such as service tiers or standardized deliverables, it becomes difficult to maintain consistency across clients or clearly communicate the full value of your offerings. Well-defined packages help clients see how your services align with their needs today and how those services can evolve with them.

New Client Acquisition Feels Limited

Even for experienced providers, gaining new clients can be one of the most persistent challenges. Many rely on referrals or long-standing networks, which may not deliver the consistent growth needed to scale. At the same time, selling strategic services requires a different approach than selling tactical fixes. Prospective clients may not understand what an advisory engagement entails or why it’s necessary. Without clear positioning, messaging, and sales enablement tools, even strong offerings can be overlooked.

Manual Processes Are Slowing You Down

Many providers still rely on tools like Word documents, spreadsheets, and ad hoc workflows to deliver and manage their security services. While these methods can work at a small scale, they quickly become a bottleneck as demand grows. Manual processes slow down delivery and make it harder to serve more clients without increasing overhead or burning out your team.

The Solution: 4 Ways to Start Scaling

1. Prioritize Upsells

Your current clients are the most accessible and efficient starting point for expanding your advisory services. These organizations already know your work and trust your expertise, which reduces the friction often associated with introducing additional offerings. By focusing on the relationships you’ve already built, you can uncover unmet needs and identify opportunities for strategic upselling that align with each client’s goals.

The key to doing this effectively is segmentation. Begin by grouping clients by industry, size, and security maturity. This provides a clearer picture of their challenges and priorities, enabling you to tailor your advisory services accordingly. Industry segmentation reveals compliance drivers and sector-specific pain points, such as HIPAA for healthcare or CMMC for government defense contractors.

Company size can help determine the level of support needed. Smaller clients may need foundational support, while mid-sized organizations might benefit from strategic planning and executive reporting. Larger clients, even those with internal security teams, may still need fractional or deputy CISO leadership to align their programs with business objectives.

A matrix can help segment client needs:

Matrix

Once segmented, prioritize clients who are most likely to benefit from expanding into advisory services. For example, if you notice a concentration in medium maturity, medium complexity, you should prioritize developing specific advisory packages that address the unique needs of each segment, ensuring they align with client expectations and challenges. This approach allows you to grow revenue and deepen relationships by maximizing the potential within your current client base before turning attention to new acquisitions.

2. Standardize and Package Your Offerings by Tier

Once you’ve assessed your client base using the security maturity matrix, the next step is to identify where to expand advisory services and how to deliver them consistently and at scale. Standardizing both the structure and delivery of your offerings ensures that, regardless of the client’s maturity level, you have a clear, repeatable path to deepen the relationship and grow your impact.

Look at your clients through the lens of their current maturity and align your upsell approach accordingly:

Low-maturity clients may have engaged you for tactical needs, but they’re often in urgent need of foundational advisory services. Offer structured, ongoing programs that build their security maturity over time, guiding them through risk assessments, compliance planning, and policy development.
Medium-maturity clients likely have some processes in place and are ready to benefit from a more strategic advisory relationship. This is where services like recurring risk reviews, compliance oversight, and long-term planning can be introduced. Standardized formats for roadmaps and executive reporting help demonstrate clear, ongoing value.
High-maturity clients often have internal teams but still require executive-level leadership support. The opportunity here is to position yourself as a fractional or deputy CISO, providing executive guidance, program alignment, and board-level communication. Deliverables should follow defined engagement plans and reporting structures to ensure consistency and scale.

It’s not only about standardizing the packaging of your services but also the services themselves. Defining how key elements, such as risk assessments, remediation planning, compliance tracking, and executive reporting, are conducted ensures consistent quality and enables scaling delivery across more clients without reinventing the process each time. Standardization brings efficiency, clarity, and repeatability to every engagement, enabling sustainable growth and development.

Burwood Group, for example, implemented a standardized risk assessment process and now sees over 50 percent of those assessments convert into ongoing vCISO engagements. By formalizing their approach, they created a scalable model that opens the door to long-term, high-value client relationships.

3. Build a System for Client Acquisition

Scaling your advisory services requires a consistent, intentional approach to attracting new clients. Start by tapping into your existing network, where trust is already established. Reconnect with past clients, current contacts, and industry peers who may know organizations in need of more strategic security guidance. This approach was key for Donna Gallaher, founder of New Oceans Enterprises, who built her initial client base by leveraging her professional network and relationships developed over a long career in enterprise IT and security. Many of her early clients were smaller companies launching new products or larger organizations seeking specialized expertise.

From there, expand your reach through targeted thought leadership. Donna later scaled her visibility through LinkedIn articles, referrals, and public speaking, methods that helped position her as a governance-first advisor and grow her vCISO practice. Educational content, such as blog posts, webinars, executive workshops, and industry briefings, helps providers communicate their expertise and demonstrate how cybersecurity and compliance directly support business goals. Focus your messaging on the outcomes that matter most to your ideal clients, such as reduced risk exposure, increased compliance, and stronger alignment with business strategy.

Cynomi provides powerful support to help service providers drive client acquisition and scale faster through a comprehensive suite of tools, visibility programs, and strategic resources. Providers can boost visibility and establish thought leadership by being featured in the vCISO Directory and collaborating with Cynomi on educational and promotional initiatives, including social media campaigns, partner webinars, email outreach, and participation in Cynomi’s vCISO Academy. Together, these programs create a comprehensive system that empowers providers to grow efficiently and win more business.

4. Leverage Automation to Multiply Impact

Manual processes remain one of the biggest bottlenecks to growth for service providers. From assessments and remediation planning to policy creation and reporting, providers often spend hours on repeatable tasks that consume valuable resources and limit capacity. This not only slows delivery but also makes it harder to maintain consistency across clients or scale services efficiently.

Cybersecurity and compliance management platforms, like Cynomi, leverage automation to bring structure, speed, and consistency to service delivery. Automated workflows streamline the entire process, from onboarding and assessments to remediation planning, compliance tracking, and reporting, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. Risk assessments are guided and comprehensive, policies are auto-generated and tailored to each client’s needs, and remediation plans are built from prioritized insights. Executive-ready reports are created in seconds, replacing hours of manual work.

The time savings add up quickly. For example, automation can save nearly 10 hours on risk assessments, up to 11 hours on policy creation, and as much as 13 hours on progress reporting per client. Multiply that across dozens of clients, and the impact on capacity, margins, and client satisfaction is substantial. This end-to-end automation enhances efficiency and accuracy, allowing teams to operate with greater capacity as trusted, strategic partners. In today’s competitive landscape, automation is not just a productivity tool; it’s a strategic advantage for growing and sustaining a high-impact advisory practice.

Real-world results: Cynomi clients, such as Secure Cyber Defense, have unlocked significant operational efficiency gains through automation, such as cutting client discovery time by 90% and accelerating deal closures by threefold. Read the full case study here.

Scaling Doesn’t Require Reinvention, Just the Right Strategy

Expanding your advisory services doesn’t mean taking on more work or overhauling everything you’ve built. It means identifying what already works and applying the right structure, standardization, and tools to do it more efficiently, and at scale.

The key is to prioritize upsell opportunities within your existing client base, where trust and familiarity already exist. Package your services into clear, maturity-aligned tiers that are easy to sell and deliver. Create a repeatable system for attracting new clients through thought leadership and targeted outreach. Most critically, embrace automation to streamline delivery, free up resources, and maintain consistency as your business grows.

The path to scale is achievable. With a focus on client value, smart operational choices, and support from cybersecurity and compliance management platforms like Cynomi, you can scale your existing advisory services while continuing to deliver the strategic impact your clients rely on.

Ready to accelerate your cybersecurity and compliance services?

The Cynomi cybersecurity and compliance management hub enables service providers to develop new services and scale existing ones through streamlined service delivery, guided processes, and efficient workflows.

As a result of enhanced efficiency and additional service offerings, providers can enter and succeed in competitive markets, driving fresh revenue streams and new client acquisition. For service providers struggling to scale, Cynomi brings structure and automation to service delivery by embedding policies and frameworks while simplifying key processes such as risk assessments, compliance readiness, remediation planning, task management, and reporting. Cynomi is made for the service provider and includes features such as the Solution Showcase, which maps service offerings to the specific needs uncovered in client cybersecurity assessments, transforming routine assessments into powerful upsell opportunities.

Discover how Cynomi enables service providers to scale their operations, achieve faster, measurable outcomes, and focus on strategic growth at cynomi.com.

From Friction to Flow: A Smarter Onboarding Approach for Cybersecurity Providers

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 30 June, 2025

Education

From Friction to Flow: A Smarter Onboarding Approach for Cybersecurity Providers

How automation streamlines assessments and onboarding and can help service providers accelerate client discovery by 90%

Client onboarding is the first step of any service provider engagement, forming the foundation for effective service delivery and lasting partnerships. Yet the process is often slow and resource-intensive, requiring significant input from clients. In many cases, assessments can take weeks or even months, with key business context scattered across emails, documents, and spreadsheets.

The result? A slower start to value delivery, resource bottlenecks, and a rocky start to what should be a long-term, high-impact relationship.

These may seem like minor inefficiencies, but they potentially impact the overall effectiveness and scalability of a provider’s service delivery over time. In this blog, we’ll explore why traditional cybersecurity onboarding and assessments are so often a source of friction, the hidden costs that come with manual, fragmented processes, and how providers can use automation and standardization to dramatically improve speed, consistency, and client experience.

The Root of the Problem: Manual and Unstructured Processes

Each new cybersecurity engagement typically starts from scratch, with teams tasked with understanding business and their needs, evaluating the client’s security posture and identifying compliance requirements. Providers frequently rely on Word documents, spreadsheets, and lengthy interviews to gather information, using generic questionnaires that can overwhelm clients with irrelevant questions.

This reliance on disconnected tools leads to fragmented processes. Teams chase down emails, spreadsheets, and scattered documentation, resulting in workflows that are difficult to manage, prone to delays, and nearly impossible to replicate consistently across clients.

Without a clear, standardized structure, every assessment can feel like an isolated, one-off project that requires rebuilding the process each time. This can lead to inconsistent quality, slower delivery, and a disjointed client experience, even when engagements are handled by the same team. Moreover, it can take weeks to get to results, and those findings are often difficult to deliver in a clear, visual format that effectively communicates value to business leaders.

Common challenges include:

Lack of standardized assessment templates – Teams reinvent the wheel with each engagement, resulting in inconsistent outputs.
Delays in gathering key inputs – Business context, asset inventories, and compliance needs are often incomplete or delayed because the information is spread across multiple stakeholders, not easily accessible, or requires coordination between departments.”
Overreliance on disconnected tools – Emails, spreadsheets, and shared drives hinder collaboration and scale.
Inconsistent delivery across team members – Without a repeatable process, outcomes vary based on who’s managing the engagement.
Limited reporting and communication – Results are often delayed and may be presented in formats that are not accessible or actionable for non-technical stakeholders. This can reduce client clarity, engagement, and confidence.

These inefficiencies delay time-to-value, reduce client satisfaction, and ultimately impact trust, retention, and revenue growth.

The Result: Stalled Business Growth for Service Providers and a Lengthy, High-Friction Experience for Clients

Inefficient onboarding doesn’t just slow things down, it can hinder a provider’s ability to grow. When service delivery is inconsistent and resource-intensive, scaling becomes a significant challenge.

For newly signed clients, this can mean delayed outcomes and reduced momentum, which may erode trust and diminish overall satisfaction. Clients may feel stuck in administrative limbo, eager to see real progress but instead encountering repeated information requests.

At the same time, experienced team members often find themselves handling repetitive administrative tasks, while new hires face a steep learning curve due to unstructured, ad hoc workflows. This imbalance can stretch resources thin and reduce overall efficiency.

When structure is lacking, it becomes harder to deliver services at scale. Even providers experiencing high demand may struggle to onboard clients efficiently, ultimately missing chances to deepen relationships or expand service offerings.

Automation: The Key to Faster, Smarter, and More Scalable Onboarding and Assessments

Automation can fundamentally reshape one of the most time-consuming phases of client engagement: onboarding and risk assessments. Instead of relying on emails, Word docs, and spreadsheets, automation introduces structure and intelligence into the process, transforming disorganized workflows into streamlined, strategic operations.

One of the most powerful benefits of automation is standardization. Interactive questionnaires, built-in system scans, and centralized data capture allow providers to apply the same high-quality methodology across every engagement, regardless of who is leading it. This ensures assessments are both consistent and tailored to the client’s unique context, including business priorities, regulatory requirements, and technical environments.

With everything captured in a single, unified platform, teams no longer need to chase down documents or repeat the same interviews. Instead, automated tools guide the process from start to finish – collecting the right data, surfacing the most critical insights, and building a clear, prioritized remediation plan. This saves time, reduces human error, and makes onboarding not only faster, but also more valuable to the client.

Here’s an example of how automation can streamline assessment and onboarding:

Type of process	Manual processes	Automation
Data collection	Manually collected via interviews, emails, forms, and spreadsheets.	Collected through interactive, guided questionnaires and technical scans.
Evaluating client business	Done through lengthy interviews and manual documentation.	Client business is evaluated often with elements of artificial intelligence using insights on business context, technical environment, industry and business priorities in comparison to industry standards.
Evaluating cybersecurity environment	Done by reviewing policies, conducting interviews, and analyzing system configurations across fragmented tools and documentation.	Business context, industry, and technical environment are analyzed using smart questionnaires and technical scans.
Uncovering vulnerabilities and gaps	Typically done manually through spreadsheets, interviews, and siloed tools, requiring extensive coordination across teams and environments.	Guided assessments and integrated security scans are often used to instantly identify vulnerabilities and gaps across the organization’s environment.
Presenting results	Word/PDF reports manually created and inconsistent.	Often with automated dashboards and easy to generate reports.

By shifting assessments from a manual, one-off effort to an automated, repeatable process, providers can:

Accelerate onboarding timelines
Increase assessment accuracy
Free up senior staff for strategic work
Empower junior team members
Deliver more professional, consistent client experiences

In short, automation turns a previously tedious task into a high-value service, unlocking new revenue streams, improving margins, and enabling long-term, scalable growth.

A more structured and insightful assessment experience also creates natural entry points for upselling additional services. When clients clearly understand their risks and gaps through well-delivered assessments, they are more likely to invest in follow-up services, projects, and long-term strategic guidance.

Real-World Example: How Secure Cyber Defense Streamlined Assessments and Onboarding

Background

Secure Cyber Defense, a growing cybersecurity service provider, faced a familiar challenge: onboarding and assessments were slow, manual, and resource-heavy. Their team relied on Word documents, spreadsheets, and lengthy interviews to gather information – a process that varied from one client to the next and took weeks to complete. As a result, service delivery was delayed, consistency suffered, and scaling operations became increasingly difficult.

The Automation Difference

To address these inefficiencies, Secure Cyber Defense adopted Cynomi, the leading cybersecurity and compliance management platform to streamline their onboarding and assessment workflows. The platform enabled them to standardize how client information was gathered, risk was assessed, and remediation plans were developed. Interactive questionnaires and automated scans replaced manual data collection, ensuring more accurate inputs and eliminating repetitive tasks. This not only accelerated their process but also made it more repeatable across clients.

“Before Cynomi, assessments were largely manual, using Word documents and spreadsheets. Now, we’ve automated much of the process, which not only saves time but ensures consistency across every engagement.”
– Shawn Waldman, CEO of Secure Cyber Defense

The Impact

Client discovery time dropped by 90%
Sales cycles were reduced from 3 months to just 3 weeks
Junior staff were able to deliver senior-level assessments

With automation in place, Secure Cyber Defense improved operational efficiency, enhanced client experience, and unlocked a more scalable, high-margin service model. To learn more about how Secure Cyber Defense streamlined assessments, read the full case study here

Conclusion: It’s Time to Rethink Onboarding

Manual onboarding and assessment processes may feel manageable in the early stages, but they often become limiting over time. These approaches can slow value delivery, consume valuable team resources, and result in varied client experiences.

By standardizing and automating these essential early steps, providers can enhance consistency, elevate service quality, and accelerate delivery. This also allows teams to shift their focus to strategic guidance, enabling scalable growth and stronger client relationships.

With the right tools, cybersecurity providers can reduce manual friction, streamline onboarding, and begin delivering value sooner in the client journey.

How Cynomi Partners Elevate Client Onboarding

Cynomi helps service providers streamline and elevate client onboarding. Interactive, guided questionnaires and built-in technical scans speed up data collection and make the process more intuitive and enjoyable for clients. Once assessments are completed, the findings are displayed instantly in clear visual formats, showing open gaps, vulnerabilities, and compliance status. These insights are immediately translated into a structured security and compliance roadmap, complete with prioritized remediation steps and associated policies.

Here’s a quick look at Cynomi’s onboarding and assessment process:

Step 1: Begin the onboarding and assessments process

Screen: Assessments dashboard

Step 2: Answer various questions, including:

Screen: Onboarding Assessment: Industry

Screen: Onboarding Assessment: Company size

Screen: Onboarding Assessment: Security Regulations

Step 3: Instantly see gaps, vulnerabilities and compliance status

Screen: Main Dashboard

Step 4: Tasks are automatically generated to create a prioritized security and compliance workflow roadmap with associated policies

Screen: Tasks

By standardizing workflows and automating time-consuming tasks, Cynomi enables service providers to efficiently scale operations, expand client bases, and deliver high-impact cybersecurity services. To learn how Cynomi can help you streamline your onboarding and assessment processes, visit cynomi.com.

From Compliance as a Service to vCISO: Navigating the Transition Successfully

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 11 June, 2025

Compliance

For many service providers, the shift from compliance to strategic cybersecurity services goes beyond launching new offerings. It’s about stepping into a strategic advisory role that delivers broader business impact, builds stronger relationships with leadership, and creates opportunities for recurring revenue.

Making this shift requires more than gaining technical expertise. It requires a shift in mindset, skillset, and service model.

Drawing on insights from top security leaders, inspiring service providers who shared their journeys in the Path to Becoming a vCISO hub, this blog explores the most common challenges faced by providers expanding into strategic security services and shares proven strategies for a successful transition.

What Makes the Shift Challenging?

Moving beyond compliance to strategic security services opens the door to broader influence and impact, but it also introduces a different set of challenges. Rather than focusing solely on audit preparation or checklist completion, providers are expected to align cybersecurity with business priorities, guide leadership, and provide strategic direction.

One of the most impactful services a provider can offer is Virtual CISO (vCISO) services, but delivering it effectively goes beyond technical expertise. Here are the five most common challenges shared by experienced vCISOs:

Redefining What Success Looks Like

Success shifts from simply adhering to framework requirements and documenting compliance tasks to enabling clients to make informed, risk-aware decisions. The focus is no longer on technical completeness alone, but on driving business-relevant outcomes while maintaining regulatory alignment.

Soft Skills Become Critical

Strong communication, trust-building, and executive presence become central to success. Providers must engage confidently with both technical teams and business leaders, translating complex cybersecurity concepts into meaningful, action-oriented insights.

From Execution to Strategy

Alongside technical execution, providers are increasingly advising on security priorities, aligning cybersecurity efforts with business needs, and helping clients create actionable roadmaps that guide long-term planning and improvement.

Expanded Scope

Strategic security services often involve compliance oversight, policy development, executive reporting, risk management, and more. Without well-defined structure and tools, many providers feel stretched across too many demands too quickly.

Delayed Financial Return

Developing strategic cybersecurity services takes time and resources: creating packages, training teams, and earning client trust. While the long-term revenue is strong, early returns may take time to materialize.

How to Successfully Transition to a vCISO Role

The following strategies, shaped by the experiences of successful vCISO leaders, provide a proven framework to help providers evolve their compliance services into strategic cybersecurity offerings.

With the right structure and mindset, these steps enable a smoother, more scalable, and more rewarding transition.

Build on Existing Compliance Services

“Providers are leaving money on the table. They’re missing out on revenue by assuming they need to offer comprehensive security services right away. Instead, they can start with a simpler, basic offering as a first step.”
– William Birchett, Founder of The vCISO Network & President of Logo Systems

Very few vCISOs launch with a complete offering from day one. In fact, starting small and building gradually is often the most sustainable path.

Many providers already conduct assessments, gap analysis, develop policies, or support audits. These services form the foundation of a security program. With the right structure, these offerings can be packaged into a recurring, strategic program that adds value and builds long-term trust with clients.

To learn how to successfully package your strategic cybersecurity services, explore the free vCISO Academy course: Building and Selling vCISO Services.

Adopt a Business-First Mindset

“One of the biggest challenges was learning how to communicate risk effectively. It wasn’t enough to say, ‘We need to do this because it’s not secure.’ I had to articulate the ‘why’ in a way that resonated with leadership and showed what’s in it for them.”
–Carlos Rodriguez, CEO of CA2 Security

Transitioning from compliance-focused services to delivering strategic security requires a shift in thinking. It is no longer just about resolving vulnerabilities. Instead, the focus turns to aligning cybersecurity efforts with broader business objectives.

Effective vCISOs frame their recommendations in terms of impact, such as reducing risk, supporting operational continuity, and strengthening resilience. Rather than aiming for perfection, they guide clients toward the most meaningful improvements based on context and constraints.

“Security isn’t about perfection, it’s about balancing risk tolerance, budget, and business goals. You need to prioritize ‘good enough’ security measures that deliver maximum impact without overburdening clients financially or operationally.”
– Jesse Miller, Founder of PowerPSA Consulting

Communicate with Executives

“Understanding the business context is critical to being able to provide cybersecurity services in an effective way.”
-Evan Morgan, Founder, Cyber Defense Army (CDA)

Success in strategic security delivery hinges on effectively engaging leadership teams, boards, and non-technical stakeholders.

To do this well, it’s important to translate security decisions into business language and focus on cost, continuity, and risk reduction. When security is framed as a strategic enabler and directly tied to business outcomes, it builds trust and fosters stronger alignment with leadership.

“If you’re transitioning into a vCISO role, focus on developing your soft skills. Presentation and communication are just as important as technical knowledge. You’re selling trust, and that means being able to clearly articulate your value to boards and leadership teams.”
– Donna Gallaher, Founder of New Orleans Enterprises

Plan for Sustainable Growth

“Plan for the future and be able to scale. Be willing to turn down opportunities when you can’t accept all that demand…Focusing on the strategy of your business and how you’re going to be able to scale is super, super important.”
– Evan Morgan, Founder of Cyber Defense Army (CDA)

Sustainable growth requires a defined structure and a deliberate approach to scaling. Effective scaling involves defining target client profiles, streamlining service offerings, and establishing operational systems that ensure reliable and repeatable delivery.

Successful vCISOs rely on automation and use purpose-built platforms (such as the Cynomi central cybersecurity and compliance management hub) to streamline manual work, maintain quality, and scale operations without overextending their teams.

Specialize Where You Bring Unique Value

“Before launching security services, it’s essential to understand your client profile. With so many compliance frameworks out there, you won’t master them all at once. Start by choosing one framework, learn it thoroughly, and focus your efforts on serving that specific vertical.”
– Nett Lynch, CISO at Kraft Kennedy

Focus on a specific industry – such as healthcare, finance, or legal – to make your services more valuable. Industry-specific knowledge enables tailored strategies that address unique regulatory and operational challenges, helping establish credibility and strategic influence within the chosen market.

Build Trusted, Long-Term Relationships

“We don’t just close gaps, we help clients make real, lasting improvements.”
– Greg Schaffer, Founder of vCISO Services

Clients don’t just want fixes, they want strategic guidance and ongoing support. Trust, transparency, and honest advice form the foundation of lasting partnerships.

Making the Shift and Delivering Strategic Impact

Transitioning into a strategic cybersecurity role doesn’t mean starting from scratch, but rather elevating what you already offer. It involves leading strategically, communicating effectively, and delivering business-aligned value. With the right structure and mindset, your current offerings can become the foundation of an ongoing, scalable strategic security practice.

Whether you’re just getting started or already offering pieces of the vCISO model, there’s a growing community of leaders doing the same. Visit the vCISO Leader Hub to find out more about the journeys of industry leaders along with practical guidance for building a cybersecurity practice that works for you and your clients.

How Cynomi Can Accelerate the Shift to Strategic Cybersecurity Services

Cynomi helps service providers successfully evolve from compliance-focused offerings to high-impact, strategic cybersecurity services. As a central cybersecurity and compliance hub, Cynomi automates and standardizes processes like risk assessments, policy generation, remediation planning, and executive reporting. Its AI-driven platform reduces manual work, enabling more efficient operations, consistent service delivery, and scalable growth.

To learn more about how Cynomi enables service providers to deliver strategic security services efficiently and at scale, click here.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Launching vCISO Services

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 13 May, 2025

Education

A Step-by-Step Guide to Launching vCISO Services

With 98% of service providers without vCISO services planning to offer them in the future (according to The State of the Virtual CISO 2024 report), there’s no doubt the virtual CISO model is gaining traction fast. The opportunity is significant, but many providers encounter challenges when trying to get started. That’s where many providers get stuck.

Launching vCISO services comes with unique challenges: technological barriers, uncertainty around skills and processes, and limited security resources. Fortunately, you don’t need decades of CISO experience to deliver high-value results. You simply need the right strategy and the right tools.

To make that first step easier, Cynomi created The Checklist for Launching vCISO Services – practical, actionable guide to help you launch fast, scale efficiently, and drive profitability.

Download the checklist now, or read on for some highlights that will help you build a strong foundation from day one.

Define Your vCISO Offering

Effective vCISO services start with well-defined goals. Many new service providers attempt to cover too much ground. Offering an all-in-one approach becomes difficult to manage and scale. In the vCISO Academy course on Building and Selling vCISO Services, Jesse Miller emphasizes that a successful vCISO practice starts with a focused, well-structured offering that aligns with your capabilities and clients’ needs.

He outlines why it’s essential to clearly define your offering from the start, whether you’re offering governance and advisory services, intermediate compliance and risk management, advanced fractional CISO leadership, or all three. Having a clearly defined structure gives service providers confidence and sets the right expectations with clients from the start, so offerings can be effectively packaged and priced.

Establish a Strong Client Engagement Process

As Jesse Miller emphasizes in Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success, a great client experience starts with a well-defined onboarding process. When the initial engagement is structured and intentional, everything that follows becomes easier to manage, more consistent, and more impactful.

From the outset, it’s important to align on business goals, compliance needs, and past security challenges. Setting clear success criteria ensures your services stay focused and measurable. This not only improves delivery, it strengthens your relationship with the client from day one.

Conduct a Comprehensive Risk Assessment

As Will Birchett points out in the vCISO Academy course: Introduction to vCISO Services, launching vCISO services isn’t about having decades of experience; it’s about using the right tools to deliver structured, actionable insight. A well-executed risk assessment is a key first step in demonstrating value and helping clients understand where they stand.

The priority is understanding clients’ security posture by performing a risk assessment using trusted frameworks like NIST, CIS, or ISO 27001. A structured assessment lays the foundation for identifying vulnerabilities in networks, systems, and third-party vendors, allowing for a holistic security strategy that aligns with business objectives.

Develop a Clear Security Roadmap

Once you have completed the risk assessment, the next step is turning insights into action. Clients seek not only identification of gaps but also actionable solutions. Your roadmap should outline short-term and long-term security goals, including actionable remediation steps that align with compliance requirements and business needs.

This approach helps clients stay focused, make informed decisions, and build confidence in their security strategy. This positions service providers as strategic partners, rather than a compliance checklist checker.

Demonstrate Value and Communicate with Stakeholders

Your work as a vCISO is highly valuable, but for clients to fully benefit from it, they need to clearly understand the impact. Especially in the early stages of a vCISO relationship, clear communication with business stakeholders is key to building trust and long-term engagement as emphasized in the Thinking and Communicating Like a CISO.

Clients expect results, but many don’t fully understand what results can be expected from a vCISO service. To maintain client trust and secure long-term engagements, successful vCISOs regularly update leadership with security reports that translate technical risks into business impact. Effective vCISOs leverage automated reporting to clearly demonstrate measurable progress on the metrics that matter most to decision-makers.

Security is an ongoing process, and clients need to see how their vCISO contributes to their overall business resilience.

The Bottom Line: Starting Is the Hardest Part

Offering vCISO services is a smart, strategic step for MSPs and MSSPs looking to increase recurring revenue, expand into new markets, and deliver more strategic value to clients. Turning that opportunity into a repeatable, scalable business model requires more than good intentions; it requires structure, efficiency, and the right tools.

The Checklist for Launching vCISO Services provides a clear, practical roadmap to help you build and grow your vCISO offering with confidence. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to enhance an existing service, this step-by-step guide will help you launch faster and scale smarter.

Download the checklist now and take the first step toward a stronger, more profitable vCISO practice.

How We Used The Cynomi Platform to Achieve ISO 27001:2022 Certification

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 5 May, 2025

vCISO Community

As our team works toward ISO 27001:2022 certification, we’re using the Cynomi platform at every stage of the process.

I sat down with Dror Hevlin, our CISO, to talk about how we’re applying our own platform to achieve ISO readiness, and why we believe this approach represents the future of security and compliance, especially for service providers supporting their own clients on similar journeys.

1. Dror, let’s start with the big picture. I know it was important for you to get Cynomi ISO 27001 certification?

Dror: ISO 27001 is a globally recognized standard, and we want to show our commitment to high levels of security, not just in principle, but in practice. It’s not just about passing an audit; it’s about aligning our internal processes with best practices and being able to prove it. As a security-first company, it’s essential we hold ourselves to the same standards we help our partners meet.

2. How did you use the Cynomi platform to manage the process of getting ISO 27001 certification?

Dror: We use our own technology just how we recommend service providers use it with their clients. We started by onboarding our environment into Cynomi. The platform guided us through an interactive onboarding process – leveraging questionnaires, policy evaluations, and scans to quickly build a complete picture of our security posture and compliance status.

From there, Cynomi automatically generated a pre-populated risk register, a prioritized remediation plan, and a list of actionable tasks – all directly mapped to ISO 27001:2022 controls, including the new Annex A control categories.

Tasks are dual-purpose – they improve our real-world security posture and simultaneously drive us toward ISO compliance. That’s one of the platform’s biggest strengths, security and compliance are integrated, not siloed. So we’re not duplicating work, and we’re not juggling disconnected systems.

As we complete each task, whether it’s implementing a policy, mitigating a vulnerability, or assigning ownership, Cynomi instantly updates our compliance dashboard and security posture to reflect that progress. That kind of visibility is incredibly valuable. It means we can run ISO alignment not as a one-off project, but as an ongoing, continuous process, all within our own platform.

And because Cynomi is already tracking our security and compliance activity, it serves as built-in documentation. When it comes time to prove compliance, the platform itself is our system of record. It eliminates guesswork and makes audit prep nearly effortless.

3. What are the biggest benefits of using Cynomi for ISO certification?

Dror: Four things stand out:

Speed and simplicity. The platform reduced our discovery time and setup by more than half. It’s fast and guided. From assessments to pre-populated risk registers, auto-generated remediation plans and custom reporting, the platform makes the process seamless and saves our team time at every step.
Continuous compliance tracking. Every task we complete, security policy, mitigation, control, is mapped directly to ISO. We always know exactly where we stand.
Audit readiness. All our documentation, task ownership, and status updates are logged and exportable. No scrambling at the last minute.
Security – first. Every task improves real security and maps to ISO controls, so compliance happens automatically as we strengthen our posture.That way we’re secure, not just compliant. It’s a major difference. Compliance is the outcome, but security is the driver.

4. How does the platform handle framework changes—like the 2022 update to ISO 27001?

Dror: That’s one of the biggest advantages. When ISO updates their framework, we don’t have to start from scratch. Cynomi automatically updates the backend mappings. The tasks we already have in place are re-scored or remapped to the new controls, and we instantly see any new gaps that need addressing.

It saves hours of work and ensures we’re always aligned, even if the standard evolves.

5. What would the ISO process look like without Cynomi?

Dror: It would be messy and lengthy. You’d need to download the ISO checklist, manually create tasks, assign them in a ticketing system, track progress in spreadsheets, and collect evidence in scattered folders. Then repeat all that every year, or worse, discover at audit time that something was missed.

We’ve done it that way in past companies. It’s time-consuming and stressful.

6. What would you say to a service provider wondering if it’s worth offering ISO services to their clients?

Dror: ISO 27001 is in high demand. Clients are under pressure to prove they’re secure, and they need partners who can help them do it efficiently. Cynomi turns ISO services into something repeatable and scalable. You can onboard clients faster, reduce delivery time, and generate a new revenue stream while helping them truly improve their security posture.

Using Cynomi to manage the ISO certification process isn’t just easier, it’s smarter. It’s a way to build trust, grow your business, and deliver more value with fewer resources.

7. Final thoughts, how has this process changed the way you think about compliance?

Dror: Compliance used to feel like a chore. Now, it’s seamlessly embedded into our daily operations. Cynomi made ISO something we manage continuously, not something we rush through once a year. That shift, from reactive to proactive, is the real transformation.

And the best part? We didn’t have to build custom tools or hire extra people. We used the same platform we offer to our partners. It’s been a powerful validation of what we’re building, and why it matters.

Conclusion
By using our own platform to pursue ISO 27001:2022, we’ve seen firsthand how automation, alignment, and real-time visibility turn a complex, manual process into something smooth, scalable, and strategic.

Whether you’re managing internal compliance or helping clients pursue certification, Cynomi gives you the tools to do it faster, better, and without the overhead.

Ready to simplify ISO 27001 for your clients, and scale your security business? Book a demo with Cynomi today.

Top 40 Cybersecurity Influencers to Follow in 2025

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 21 April, 2025

vCISO Community

As cyber security threats grow more complex, regulations tighten, and businesses rethink their security, a new wave of leaders are stepping up. A growing community of forward-thinking experts are not just keeping up, but setting the pace. From MSSPs scaling vCISO services to consultancies reshaping cyber strategy for SMBs, these 40 influencers are defining what smart, scalable, and proactive cyber resilience looks like in 2025. Many of them have even shared their journeys and insights as part of the Path to Becoming a vCISO series, offering a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to lead in today’s security-first world.

Whether you’re looking for a standout service provider to partner with, or someone whose perspective can spark new ideas, this list spotlights the vCISOs shaping the future of cybersecurity in 2025.

Alexandre Blanc
Strategic and Security Advisor
LinkedIn
Alexandre Blanc is an international speaker and recognized cybersecurity influencer, known for shaping industry standards and contributing to global discussions with NIST. Named a top security expert by Favikon and Media Sonar, he brings deep expertise in cyber risk and strategy. Most recently, he served as Strategic and Security Advisor at VARS Corporation, a leading MSSP.

Allan Alford
SVP of Information Security at NTT Global Data Centers
LinkedIn
With over 20 years of experience, Allan Alford builds adaptive cybersecurity programs that not only protect the bottom line but help grow the top line. As SVP of Information Security at NTT Global Data Centers and President of Security Tinkerers, Allan prides himself on balancing opportunities with risk. A mission-driven executive known for his accessibility, strategic vision, and a touch of Texas charm, he delivers results with authenticity, clarity, and just the right dose of humor.

Dr. Aury Curbelo Ruiz
vCISO at DIGETECH
LinkedIn
Dr. Aury Curbelo Ruiz is a cybersecurity and digital forensics professional with expertise in developing IT security procedures, HIPAA compliance, and supporting law enforcement investigations. With multiple industry certifications and advanced background in information technology, Aury is known for leading security programs, engaging and empowering executive audiences, and promoting cyber awareness – most notably earning a Community Service Star Award for a teen-focused campaign in Puerto Rico.

Brad Mathis
vCISO at Keller Schroeder
LinkedIn
Brad Mathis is a seasoned vCISO with 20+ years of experience in vulnerability management, information security governance and compliance, and security leadership. At Keller Schroeder, he helps organizations build scalable, compliant cybersecurity programs. Holding certifications like CISSP, CRISC, GCCC, GSTRT, and GPEN, Brad brings both technical depth and strategic insight. Known for his collaborative leadership and strategic insight, Brad helps clients confidently navigate evolving requirements and stay ahead of emerging threats.

Carlos Rodriguez
CEO of CA2 Security
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Carlos Rodriguez is the CEO and Fractional CISO at CA2 Security, where he helps organizations develop adaptable, long-term cybersecurity strategies. With 15+ years of experience across legal, insurance, real estate, and SaaS sectors, he’s known for translating complex risks into business-aligned programs and for founding LegalSEC®, the first security-sharing organization in the legal industry.

Carlota Sage
Founder of Pocket CISO
LinkedIn
Carlota Sage is the Founder and Community CISO of Pocket CISO, a company that has a community CISO approach to security advisory services to early-stage start-ups and small organizationss. A vCISO since 2021 with prior experience in IT and Support Operations, she is a unique blend of technical experience and empathetic leadership. She is CISSP-certified and deeply committed to empowering underrepresented communities in cybersecurity, believing that strong personal and professional networks are essential to resilience.

Chad Fullerton
VP of Information Security at ECI
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Chad Fullerton is VP of Information Security at ECI, where he leads cybersecurity, risk management, and compliance programs for highly regulated sectors. With a background in IT and business and certifications like CISSP, Chad’s expertise lies in aligning security strategy with executive priorities. He’s known for his collaborative leadership, focus on resilience, and commitment to advancing the cybersecurity community through mentorship and engagement.

Chris Cathers
CEO of Octellient
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Chris Cathers is the Co-Founder and CEO of Octellient, where he leads with a business-first approach to cybersecurity. With over 20 years of experience in information security and consulting, he helps organizations turn security into a strategic asset. A frequent speaker and contributor to the cybersecurity community, Chris is known for his hands-on leadership, focus on client success, and commitment to building resilient and innovative security solutions.

Chris Roberts
CISO and Senior Director at Boom Supersonic
LinkedIn
Chris Roberts is at World Wide Technology, and has been in our industry since before its inception. His most recent projects have been focused on the aerospace, deception, deepfake, identity, cryptography, AI/AdversarialAI, and services sectors. Over the years, he’s founded or worked with numerous organizations specializing in human research, data intelligence, transportation, cryptography, and deception technologies. These days he’s working on spreading risk, maturity, collaboration, and communication messaging across the industry. When not working, he can be found in Eureka, Missouri, on the countryside on a mountain bike, or with the kids experimenting on ways to take over the planet.

Dan Sitton
Founder and CEO of Guardian Technology Group
LinkedIn
With over 24 years in cybersecurity, including military service and executive roles at major financial institutions, Dan Sitton helps banks and credit unions turn security into a strategic advantage. As CEO of Guardian Technology Group, he leads the charge in building custom security roadmaps, aligning with frameworks like FFIEC and NIST CSF 2.0, and transforming compliance into a growth driver. Dan’s mission: to make cybersecurity a foundation of trust and resilience in financial services.

Dave Bergh
CISO of Fortium Partners
LinkedIn
Dave Bergh is a forward-thinking CIO and CISO with a proven track record in enterprise cybersecurity transformation, regulatory compliance, and risk mitigation. He has secured over 100 million tax records, reduced security incidents by 30%, and maintained 100% audit success across FINRA, SOX, PCI DSS, and more. A recognized expert in Zero Trust and cloud security, Dave aligns cybersecurity with business strategy to drive growth, resilience, and operational excellence across industries.

Donna Gallaher
President & CEO of New Ocean Enterprises
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Donna Gallaher is a pioneering vCISO and CEO of New Oceans Enterprises with 20+ years of cybersecurity and IT leadership across industries like finance, healthcare, and tech. A founding member of vCISO Catalyst, she helps professionals transition into independent security roles. Her expertise includes cyber risk, compliance (PCI, HIPAA, GDPR), and program management, backed by certifications such as CISSP, C|CISO, CIPP/E, and CIPM.

Dror Helvin
CISO and VP Security at Cynomi
LinkedIn
Previously CISO at publicly traded companies including CyberArk and SolarEdge, and the first CISO of Israel’s National Cyber Security Authority, Dror Helvin brings over two decades of cybersecurity leadership expertise. With 15 years in elite IDF information security units, including Unit 8200 and Unit Matzov, Dror drives Cynomi’s security strategy, and supports partners as a field CISO, empowering MSPs and MSSPs globally to secure their clients.

Dr. Eric Cole
CEO and Founder at Secure Anchor Consulting
LinkedIn
Dr. Eric Cole is a cybersecurity expert who has been empowering businesses to improve their cybersecurity for over 30 years. He’s the CEO and Founder at Secure Anchor Consulting, the author of “Cyber Crisis,” a SANS Institute faculty Fellow and course author, and a member of the Forbes Technology Council. He often posts value-adding content including fascinating articles and infographics and provides vCISO training.

Eric Garcia
Founder of Cyber Wise Consulting
LinkedIn
Eric Garcia is the Founder and Lead Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyber Wise Consulting, bringing experience from the military, defense sector, and Fortune 500 companies. He specializes in helping small and mid-sized businesses strengthen their cybersecurity posture, protect their data, and navigate complex compliance challenges. With a focus on practical, business-driven security strategies, Eric provides vCISO services and cybersecurity advisory to organizations in healthcare, finance, and other highly regulated industries.

Evan Morgan
Founder of Cyber Defense Army (CDA)
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Evan Morgan is the founder of Cyber Defense Army, a cybersecurity consultancy serving highly regulated sectors like finance, government, and defense. With a U.S. military background and executive experience at a top 20 bank, he specializes in bridging technical security with business strategy. Today, he leads vCISO services and managed security operations, helping organizations automate and scale their cybersecurity efforts.

George Bakalov
vCISO at Executive Solutions USA
LinkedIn
George Bakalov is an Information Security Manager focused on empowering small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with affordable, effective cybersecurity solutions. Through Executive Solutions USA, he helps organizations assess risk, build policies, train employees, and prepare for incidents, all tailored to the realities of SMBs. George brings a hands-on, consultative approach to protecting digital assets and strengthening long-term security postures.

Gina Yacone
Information Security Leader at Trace3
LinkedIn
Gina Yacone is a seasoned cybersecurity consultant and vCISO leading the information security sector at Trace3 in Denver. She has designed and executed security programs across industries and is a frequent speaker, advisor, and board member – actively contributing to the cybersecurity community through organizations like Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS). With 50+ speaking engagements, Gina is a recognized voice in vCISO leadership and cyber resilience.

Greg Schaffer
Principal at vCISO Services, LLC
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Greg Schaffer is a seasoned information security executive proficient in Information security management, vendor risk, policy implementation, and business continuity. He is the founding principal of vCISO Services, LLC, an information security consulting firm providing small and midsized businesses with strategic information security expertise. He hosts The Virtual CISO Moment podcast, is the author of the bestselling book Information Security for Small and Midsized Businesses, and has spoken at numerous conferences over 20-plus years.

Jesse Miller
Cybersecurity Executive and vCISO
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Jesse Miller is a seasoned information security leader and founder of PowerPSA Consulting and the PowerGRYD vCISO system. With deep expertise in tech operations, compliance, and MSP enablement, he helps providers scale profitable vCISO programs. Since launching his first vCISO service in 2014, Jesse has become a trusted advisor for MSPs looking to elevate their cybersecurity offerings and better communicate the “why” behind security to clients.

Dr Jerry Craig
VP of Information Security at Integris
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Dr. Jerry Craig is a cybersecurity executive with 20+ years of experience across military, government, and private sectors. A former Marine and CISO at Ntiva, he now leads information security at Integris, a national MSP. He also teaches at Capitol Technology University and UMGC. Holding a Doctor of Science in Cybersecurity and multiple certifications (CISSP, C|CISO, CCSP, PMP), Dr. Craig is recognized for his strategic leadership and deep expertise in cyber risk and compliance.

Jim Tiller
President, IT and Security at BlueSky Innovations
LinkedIn
Jim Tiller is an internationally recognized cybersecurity authority with over 30 years of experience in cyber risk management, security architecture, and regulatory compliance. A patent-winning recognition for innovation in security solutions and a published thought leader, he has led security programs across industries while advising at both the C-suite and technical levels. Jim specializes in aligning cybersecurity with business strategy, applying frameworks like NIST, ISO, MITRE ATT&CK, and DoD ZT to drive scalable, people-centric security solutions.

John Caruthers
Founder at HAK-iQ
LinkedIn
With over 30 years of experience, including 27 years with the FBI, John Caruthers is a seasoned cybersecurity leader and EVP/CISO at Triden Group. He leads the firm’s flagship vCISO service, helping organizations build scalable, tailored security programs. A trusted advisor and strategist, he combines law enforcement expertise with private-sector leadership to protect businesses, strengthen reputations, and drive measurable security outcomes.

Kevin Baker
Chief Information Security Officer at Fortress Security Risk Management
LinkedIn | Watch Lunch & Learn
Kevin Baker is a seasoned security leader with 23 years of experience in building and operating effective security programs across insurance and financial services. As CISO at Fortress Security Risk Management, he draws on deep technical expertise in tools like firewalls, IDS/IPS, and threat intelligence to deliver adaptable, business-aligned security strategies. His background spans both domestic and international operations, bringing a practical, service-driven approach to enterprise security.

Laura Louthan
Founder of Angel Cybersecurity
LinkedIn
Laura is a vCISO with 15+ years of experience in global security operations, IT architecture, and data management. Following a variety of roles including heading information security for a large retailer, Laura founded her cybersecurity consulting firm in 2017, Angel Cybersecurity, which is dedicated to helping small and medium business discover their potential to secure their critical information assets. She specializes in Compliance (with a unique focus on PCI), audit and assessment, and risk management. In addition to participating as a speaker in industry events and podcasts, Laura also gives online courses on LinkedIn Learning.

Michael Collins
Founder of Cyber Cognition
LinkedIn
Michael Collins is a cybersecurity leader with 20+ years of global experience across the UK, UAE, and New Zealand. As the founder of Cyber Cognition, he focuses on advisory and education services that reshape how organizations approach cybersecurity. A recognized expert in systems thinking, Michael advises boards and startups, and is a frequent speaker, published author, and contributor to industry podcasts and journals.

Michelle Drolet
CEO and Founder of Towerwall
LinkedIn
Michelle Drolet is the founder and CEO of Towerwall, a cybersecurity firm she has lead for 26 years. She advises organizations on about cyber risks, compliance issues, as well as making cybersecurity accessible to all. She is a sought-after speaker, and panelist, and is a regular contributor to leading online publications such as Forbes Technology Council, Wired.com, and IDG CSO Online.

Mike Miller
Cybersecurity Executive and vCISO
LinkedIn
Mike Miller has over 25 years of experience as a CISO specializing in GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance), PCI, Defensive (SOC / Intrusion Detection) and Offensive Security (Penetration Testing), and Incident Response. Mike is a true thought leader in the vCISO space – in addition to speaking at conferences and giving interviews on cybersecurity, he owns a newsletter addressing the latest cybersecurity topics and shares from his experience as a vCISO daily on social media.

Mike Wilkes
Seasoned Chief Information Security Officer
LinkedIn | Watch Lunch & Learn
Mike Wilkes is a seasoned Chief Information Security Officer known for his work with companies like SecurityScorecard, ASCAP, Marvel, AQR Capital, and Sony, among others. He was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a technology pioneer in 2020 and is the author of the book “ Cisco Internet Applications and Solutions” for Cisco Press in 2002. In addition to teaching cybersecurity at NYU, Mike is a frequent speaker at major industry conferences. Today, he focuses on vCISO services and continues to share practical, insightful content, making him a go-to voice in the evolving cybersecurity landscape.

Nathan Jones
CEO and Co-founder at SecuraNova
LinkedIn
A cybersecurity leader, entrepreneur, and former intelligence professional with over 20 years of experience, Nathan Jones is the CEO of SecuraNova – a next-gen cybersecurity marketplace transforming how businesses access security services. With a background at GCHQ and Synack, he brings deep expertise in both offensive and defensive security. His mission: to deliver flexible, outcome-driven solutions that empower businesses to take control of their cybersecurity posture.

Nett Lynch
CISO at Kraft & Kennedy
LinkedIn | Watch Interview at Path to becoming a vCISO
Nett Lynch is a cybersecurity leader specializing in left-of-boom and advisory services, with deep expertise in regulated industries. She bridges the gap between technical security and business strategy, translating complex assessments into clear, actionable insights. Known for her strategic guidance and executive-level strategic communication style, Nett helps organizations strengthen their security posture and align risk management with business goals.

Paolo Carner
Founder of Bare Cybersecurity
LinkedIn
Paolo Carner is the founder of Bare Cybersecurity, where he helps companies strengthen their security frameworks with a pragmatic, business-aligned approach. With experience at top cybersecurity vendors and startups, he’s recognized as a trusted consultant, speaker, and author. Paolo serves as a fractional CISO for startups, helping them scale securely and meet compliance goals. He is CISSP and CCSP certified through ISC2.

Rob Black
Founder and CEO of Fractional CISO
LinkedIn
Rob Black is the founder and CEO of Fractional CISO, where he and his team help businesses manage risk and scale securely through tailored vCISO programs. A CISSP-certified expert, Rob is also a frequent speaker, writer, and advisor in the cybersecurity space, supporting dozens of companies in strengthening their security posture.

Stephen Parsons
CEO & Co-founder of VISO
LinkedIn
With over 20 years of experience in senior IT and cybersecurity roles across sectors like finance, healthcare, construction, and distribution, Stephen Parsons specializes in aligning cyber strategy with business goals. Holding an MBA from Henley Business School and a Master’s in Cyber Security from the University of Liverpool, he has led governance initiatives from the ground up and helped organizations achieve certifications including Cyber Essentials and ISO 27001.

Sue Bergamo
CISO at BTE Partners
LinkedIn
A seasoned global executive advisor, podcaster, author, Sue Bergamo is passionate about connecting people and driving secure innovation. With deep expertise in cybersecurity strategy, risk management, and digital transformation, she advises startups, PE/VC firms, and boards on readiness and resilience. From M&A to cloud architecture to DevSecOps, Sue brings a proven track record of aligning technology, process, and people to deliver business outcomes. She is also an accomplished speaker and thought leader, sharing her passion to create a safer world and develop innovative solutions for growth-oriented companies.

Thomas Bergman
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Burwood Group Inc.
LinkedIn | Watch Webinar
Thomas Bergman serves as Senior Consultant of Cybersecurity at Burwood Group Inc. specializing in vCISO services. Bergman leads governance, risk, and compliance engagements, ensuring clients identify, understand, and mitigate their cyber risks to support business objectives. Prior to consulting, Thomas managed global infrastructure for a Fortune 200 manufacturing organization. He holds a Master of Science in Information Technology from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and leads the Asset Management course at the vCISO Academy.

Tom Brennan
CEO of Proactive Risk
LinkedIn
A U.S. Marine Corps veteran and cybersecurity expert, Tom Brennan has a strong track record of building global tech communities, advising on government and regulatory initiatives, and enhancing public safety through technology. Offering flexible, fractional support, on-site or remote, he supports organizations managing digital threats, developing security policies, and maintaining compliance. His work spans cybersecurity, IT consulting, IT law, and custom software development.

Victoria Arkhurst
Founder and Managing Partner at IRM Consulting & Advisory
LinkedIn
Victoria Arkhurst is a seasoned vCISO and AI strategist with over 25 years of experience in cybersecurity, risk management, and compliance across financial services, healthcare, and defense. As the founder of IRM Consulting & Advisory, she helps SaaS and AaaS companies build resilient cybersecurity and compliance programs aligned with frameworks like ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST, and CMMC. A certified CISSP, CISA, CRISC, and CDPSE, Victoria is known for integrating secure AI practices and ethical data governance into her clients’ strategic roadmaps.

Wes Spencer
Co-Founder of Empath and Cybersecurity Advisor at CyberFox
LinkedIn
Wes Spencer is a nationally recognized cybersecurity expert, Co-Founder at Empath, and Cybersecurity Advisor at CyberFOX. He co-hosts The CyberCall, reaching over 5,000 MSPs weekly, and is a trusted voice in the MSP community. A frequent speaker and YouTube creator, Wes is also the founder of Empath and was named 2020 Cybersecurity Educator of the Year. His insights have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica, and Dark Reading.

William Birchett
Founder, vCISO Network & President, Logos Systems
LinkedIn
William Birchett is the President and CEO of Logos Systems and a trusted IT and cybersecurity expert with over 26 years of experience. He is also Treasurer of the Dallas-Fort Worth ISC2 Chapter and active in ISSA, IIA, and Infragard. William holds a Master’s in Information Security & Assurance, a Bachelor’s in Information Technology, a Cybersecurity Certificate from MIT, and several industry certifications. William leads the Introduction to vCISO Services, Thinking and Communicating like a CISO, and Delivering vCISO Services courses at the vCISO Academy.

From building new frameworks to mentoring the next generation of security leaders, these influencers are doing more than sharing opinions. They’re shaping how cybersecurity services are delivered and scaled across industries. Their impact is especially critical for MSPs, MSSPs, and consultancies navigating the challenges of growth, efficiency, and differentiation in an increasingly complex security landscape.

At Cynomi, we believe in empowering this evolution. Our AI-powered vCISO platform helps service providers bridge the cybersecurity skills gap, scale operations without overspending, and deliver measurable value to clients.

Want to see how Cynomi can support your journey? Learn more about our platform.

Grow & Scale with Cynomi: Empowering Service Providers for Cybersecurity Success

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 26 February, 2025

Company News

Grow & Scale with Cynomi: Empowering Service Providers for Cybersecurity Success

At Cynomi, our mission is clear: to be the ultimate technology partner for service providers, helping them grow, scale, and thrive in the evolving cybersecurity landscape. We understand that success isn’t just about managing cybersecurity risks—it’s about expanding service offerings, winning new clients, and maximizing revenue opportunities. That’s why we continuously invest in solutions that strengthen our partners’ ability to scale their businesses.

A Platform Built for Service Providers’ Success

Cynomi is dedicated to giving Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) the tools they need to enhance their cybersecurity offerings and drive business growth.

A seamless go-to-market experience, helping providers differentiate their services and attract new business.
Sales-enablement tools to help providers turn cybersecurity gaps into upsell opportunities, proving value to clients and increasing revenue.
Client-centric service mapping, ensuring service providers can clearly demonstrate the impact and utilization of their cybersecurity offerings.

Introducing the Solution Showcase: The Next Step in Your Growth Journey

The newest addition to our platform, Solution Showcase, is designed specifically to help service providers align their offerings with their clients’ needs, making it easier than ever to:

Map cybersecurity services to customer needs, strengthening value propositions and improving client retention.
Turn cybersecurity assessments into revenue-generating opportunities, identifying areas where additional products and services can be provided.
Gain deeper insights into service utilization

This is just one of many ways Cynomi empowers service providers to grow smarter, scale faster , and stand out in the competitive cybersecurity services landscape.

Our Commitment to Your Growth

Everything we do at Cynomi is driven by our commitment to helping service providers succeed. Whether it’s through our AI-powered cybersecurity management hub, advanced compliance automation, or revenue-generating features, we continue to develop tools that help our partners build and expand their cybersecurity businesses with confidence.

Grow & Scale with Cynomi is our promise to empower and support our partners in expanding their cybersecurity services with confidence and efficiency. A promise to keep investing in the technology, tools, and strategies that empower service providers to maximize their impact, win more business, and achieve long-term success.

Let’s Build the Future of Cybersecurity—Together

Your growth is our priority. Cynomi is here to provide the support, technology, and innovation that helps you scale faster, offer more value, and stay ahead of the competition. The Solution Showcase is just the beginning—there’s so much more to come.

Let’s grow, scale, and succeed—together.

Cybersecurity Reporting: Addressing the Pain Points

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 19 February, 2025

Education

Cybersecurity Reporting: Addressing the Pain Points

Cybersecurity reporting is much more than an operational necessity—it’s a bridge between the technical world of cybersecurity and the business objectives of clients. Through reports, cybersecurity professionals have an opportunity to showcase progress, provide clarity on risks, and foster a sense of trust with stakeholders. However, reporting is rarely simple. It’s a process that requires both technical acumen and the ability to translate complex data into actionable insights for non-technical audiences.

The Challenges of Cybersecurity Reporting

Despite its importance, reporting remains one of the most challenging aspects of cybersecurity work. It’s not just about pulling together charts and data points—it’s about crafting a narrative that resonates with stakeholders while ensuring accuracy and relevance. Here are some of the biggest hurdles professionals face:

Complexity of Data

Cybersecurity generates a vast amount of technical data from multiple systems, including incident logs, risk assessments, and control metrics. Parsing through this data to extract meaningful insights is no small task. Worse, these findings must often be simplified and contextualized for business decision-makers, which adds another layer of complexity.

Lack of Standardization

Reporting processes often vary significantly between organizations—or even between clients within the same organization. Without a clear, standardized framework, cybersecurity professionals face the repetitive task of customizing every report to match the client’s specific needs and expectations.

Time-Consuming Processes

Gathering data from disparate sources, analyzing trends, and preparing reports takes significant time and effort. Many teams still rely on manual workflows, which not only prolongs the process but increases the likelihood of errors.

Audience Disconnect

Stakeholders, such as C-suite executives and board members, often lack technical knowledge. Bridging this gap requires cybersecurity professionals to reframe highly technical data into actionable, business-oriented insights that align with client goals.

Pressure to Prove Value

Beyond the technical details, clients want to see how cybersecurity efforts directly impact their business. Reporting must highlight progress, justify budgets, and demonstrate a return on investment—an ongoing challenge for many professionals.

Why Effective Reporting Matters

At its core, reporting is about communication—but more importantly, it’s about demonstrating value. A well-structured report does more than present data; it provides clarity, builds trust, and helps align all parties around a shared vision for security. It serves as a tool to track progress, identify gaps, prioritize with stakeholders, and ensure cybersecurity initiatives support business goals. When done well, reporting becomes a vital part of any cybersecurity program, delivering benefits that extend far beyond the document itself. Clients need to feel confident that their cybersecurity is in capable hands. Clear, consistent reports that demonstrate progress and address key concerns build the trust needed for long-term relationships.

Business leaders rely on accurate, actionable data to make informed decisions about resource allocation, compliance, and risk management. Effective reports simplify complex issues, enabling stakeholders to take action with confidence. Cybersecurity reporting can help shift the perception of security from a cost center to a strategic enabler. By aligning security initiatives with broader business objectives, reports can showcase cybersecurity as a critical driver of growth, resilience, and competitive advantage.

Best Practices for Cybersecurity Reporting

Effective reporting isn’t just about what you include—it’s about how you present it. By adopting a set of best practices, cybersecurity professionals can ensure that their reports are clear, impactful, and aligned with client goals. Here’s how:

Know Your Audience

Every report should be tailored to its intended audience. Executives and board members, for example, care about the high-level business impact, while IT teams need detailed technical findings. Understanding who will read the report—and what they care about most—is the foundation of effective reporting.

Leverage Automation

Manually preparing reports is a labor-intensive process that eats up valuable time. Automation tools, like Cynomi’s AI-powered platform, streamline data collection, analysis, and presentation. By automating repetitive tasks, professionals can focus on delivering strategic insights instead of wrestling with spreadsheets.

Frame Findings in Terms of Business Impact

Stakeholders care less about technical jargon and more about how cybersecurity affects their bottom line. Reports should connect technical findings to business outcomes such as reduced downtime, compliance improvements, or enhanced reputation.

Tell a Story with Data

Data is more compelling when it’s used to tell a story. Visual aids like charts and graphs can make trends and progress easier to understand. Tools that simplify this process, such as Cynomi, allow professionals to create polished, client-facing reports that highlight the narrative behind the numbers.

Simplify Action Plans

Reports should go beyond identifying risks—they should provide a clear roadmap for addressing them. Assign responsibilities, prioritize next steps, and set deadlines to keep initiatives on track.

Demonstrate Value Consistently

Regular reporting reinforces your role as a trusted advisor. Tools like Cynomi make it easy to highlight ongoing progress and ROI, ensuring clients see the full impact of your efforts over time.

Making Cybersecurity Reporting Work for You

While cybersecurity reporting can be challenging, it’s also one of the most valuable tools in a professional’s toolkit. It strengthens client relationships, enables informed decisions, and demonstrates the critical role of cybersecurity in achieving business success.

By adopting best practices—such as tailoring content to your audience, leveraging automation, and framing findings in terms of business impact—you can transform reporting into a competitive advantage.

Looking to streamline your reporting process and focus on what matters most? Discover how Cynomi’s AI-powered platform simplifies reporting, saves time, and delivers insights that resonate with your clients.

IT Risk Assessment: 10 Essential Components

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 4 December, 2024

vCISO Community

IT Risk Assessment- X Essential Components

For many SMBs, managing cyber risk is a high-stakes challenge without the resources to match. Without in-house security expertise, they rely on you—MSPs and MSSPs—to bring clarity to their risk landscape and deliver meaningful IT assessments.

The stakes are high, and the urgency is real. Data breaches soared in 2023, climbing 72% over the record-breaking levels of 2021. IT risk assessments are a big win for your clients, meaning a clearer view of their security gaps, stronger defences, and a solid handle on compliance.

For MSPs/MSSPs, this strategy builds trust, strengthens relationships, and opens the door to more opportunities. Yet, delivering these assessments isn’t always easy—they require time, specialized expertise, and resources that can stretch your team thin.

What’s the purpose of an IT risk assessment?

An IT risk assessment is about pinpointing the specific risks that could hit a client the hardest. For MSPs and MSSPs, an IT risk assessment helps you go beyond generic security advice and deliver targeted, high-value solutions that your clients actually need. This strategy helps prioritize what matters, showing exactly where the client’s security gaps are, how big the potential impacts could be, and where to focus resources for the greatest protection.

IT Risk Assessment Methodologies

MSPs typically use two main methods in IT risk assessments, depending on the data available and the client’s priorities:

Quantitative: Puts a dollar amount on risks, which is perfect for clients who want a clear financial picture. This method uses metrics like Annual Loss Expectancy (ALE) to rank risks by financial impact, making it easier to decide where to allocate resources.

Qualitative: Uses expert judgment for risks that don’t have exact numbers, like reputation damage or regulatory issues. Risks are rated as “high,” “medium,” or “low” based on their likelihood and impact.

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Why Your MSP/MSSP Clients Need IT Risk Assessments

With an IT risk assessment, MSPs can go beyond one-size-fits-all security. It’s about finding the gaps that could hurt the client most, whether that’s weak access controls or unpatched software. By targeting these specific issues, you can offer security solutions that fit like a glove, showing clients exactly what they’re getting and why it matters.

A well-executed IT risk assessment also enables clients to sidestep expensive disasters before they happen. Spotting a vulnerability in, say, a client’s firewall can mean the difference between business as usual and a ransomware attack that could cost thousands. Clients get peace of mind knowing their provider has a handle on their risks, and you can build your reputation as a proactive, essential MSP/MSSP partner.

Compliance is a constant pressure for clients in regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and critical national infrastructure (CNI). IT risk assessments flag compliance issues early, allowing your clients to fix problems before auditors get involved and positioning you as an invaluable resource for keeping them compliant year-round.

What You Should Do Before Conducting an IT Risk Assessment

Before an IT risk assessment kicks off, MSPs/MSSPs should guide clients through a few essential prep steps.

Start by securing stakeholder buy-in to build support and resources for any actions needed afterward.
Communicate the plan across teams so everyone understands the goals and their role—this avoids confusion and makes data gathering more seamless.
Finally, help clients choose the right assessment methodology: quantitative for financial impact or qualitative for non-monetary risks.

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10 Essential Components of Every Good IT Risk Assessment

1. Define the Scope and Context

Begin by setting precise boundaries for the IT risk assessment. Is the focus on protecting client data in the cloud, securing internal networks, or both? For example, if the client primarily handles sensitive customer data, the scope might prioritize database security and cloud configurations.

2. Identify Key Assets

List out critical assets that, if compromised, could disrupt operations or lead to severe losses. For a financial services client, this might include transaction databases, customer account details, or payment processing systems. By identifying these key assets upfront in the IT risk assessment, MSPs/MSSPs can narrow the focus to what matters most, avoiding time spent on low-impact areas.

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3. Conduct a Threat Assessment

This step involves identifying any and all potential threats that could impact the assets in scope. Consider various threat sources, from cybercriminals to insider threats, as well as natural disasters or even vendor risks. MSPs/MSSPs can provide clients with a comprehensive risk profile by understanding what could go wrong and how likely each threat is.

It’s critical to extend the threat assessment to third parties too, considering vendor risk in the bigger picture. After all, a breach, vulnerability, or risk at any point in the supply chain can trickle down to clients, even if their business isn’t directly affected.

4. Use Vulnerability Scanning Tools

Vulnerability scans offer a quick but detailed look at weak points across a client’s network and systems. MSPs/MSSPs can leverage automated scanning tools to speed up the process of identifying gaps, like outdated software or misconfigured security settings, that could serve as entry points for attackers.

5. Assess Business Impact

Risk is about more than just the threat itself. It’s also about the potential fallout and business impact. Quantify the potential impact of each identified risk on the client’s business operations. For example, a breach in a client’s email system might lead to phishing attacks, impacting both internal security and client trust. By tying risks to specific operational impacts, MSPs can help clients see the real-world consequences of their vulnerabilities.

6. Prioritize and Evaluate Risks

Use a structured ranking system in the IT risk assessment to prioritize risks based on likelihood (the chance of occurrence) and impact (potential damage):

Risk Matrix: Create a grid with likelihood on one axis and impact on the other that categorizes risks as Low, Medium, High, or Critical.
Risk Scoring: Assign numerical scores to each risk component. Multiply the scores to get an overall risk score. This strategy quantifies risks so clients can rank them in descending order, focusing first on the highest scores.

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7. Develop Risk Mitigation Strategies

For each high-priority risk, MSPs/MSSPs should create targeted strategies to reduce the likelihood or lessen the impact on clients. Start by pinpointing the root cause, then outline specific actions like setting up firewalls, tightening access controls, or enforcing multi-factor authentication.

For risks that can’t be entirely prevented, develop contingency plans, such as regular data backups, to minimize potential damage. Assign roles and timelines within the client’s team, tracking and adjusting these strategies as needed to keep them effective.

8. Establish an Ongoing Monitoring Strategy

A one-time IT risk assessment is a snapshot, but risks evolve. For clients in fast-paced industries or with frequently changing systems, you can set up automated alerts to monitor network traffic, detect unusual activity, and flag unpatched vulnerabilities. Regular vulnerability scans, real-time threat detection, and scheduled security audits help MSPs/MSSPs spot and address new emerging risks for clients.

9. Document the Risk Assessment Process

Accurate documentation captures the findings, analysis, and decisions made during the risk assessment. This record is valuable for accountability, regulatory compliance, and future assessments. It gives the client a reference point for reviewing previous vulnerabilities and understanding the evolution of their security posture over time.

10. Educate Stakeholders and Team Members

Once the assessment is complete, it’s time to communicate the findings to key client stakeholders and IT teams through engaging reports. Use clear, non-technical language to explain each risk for non-technical stakeholders, its impact, and the actions needed to mitigate it. Visual aids like risk matrices and priority lists can highlight urgent items, while step-by-step guides offer clients a clear roadmap.

MSPs/MSSPs can also choose cyber risk assessment tools and platforms, like Cynomi’s vCISO Platform, that provide a customizable operations dashboard and one-click reporting. These platforms give you everything you need to show automated reports to clients, empowering them to take ownership of their security measures.

How Cynomi Simplifies the IT Risk Assessment Process

Conducting detailed risk assessments for each client can quickly become time-intensive and resource-demanding. With built-in automated smart and adaptive questionnaires, Cynomi makes the risk assessment process 40-60% quicker and much simpler.

Even those without formal risk assessment training can leverage Cynomi’s intuitive, step-by-step guidance and embedded knowledge base to conduct thorough assessments. Cynomi’s automated scans identify vulnerabilities in public-facing resources, and the benchmarking tool provides a clear, actionable risk score by measuring clients’ cyber risk profiles against industry standards and regulatory requirements.

Ready to simplify IT risk assessment for your clients? Book your demo today.

How to Launch Your vCISO Services in 30 Days

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 21 November, 2024

vCISO Community

How to Launch Your vCISO Services in 30 Days

With the rising demand for cybersecurity among SMBs, there’s a great opportunity for MSPs and MSSPs to capitalize on this shift and boost their revenue. However, expanding into vCISO services can feel complex. Limited cybersecurity resources, high costs, and lack of standardized processes often prevent MSPs and MSSPs from confidently launching these services.

In a recent webinar, Erick Simpson from MSP Mastered hosts Chad Fullerton, Director of Information Security at ECI, and Donald Monistere, CEO & President of General Informatics for a fireside chat on how MSPs and MSSPs can use a structured approach and leverage technology to establish and launch a sustainable, profitable vCISO offering in 30 days, without additional heavy lifting.

Watch the full webinar here.

Setting Up Your vCISO Offering: The 30-Day Roadmap

Establishing a vCISO service in 30 days is achievable with the right milestones in place. This roadmap offers a manageable, phased approach that builds your capacity to deliver high-value security services without overwhelming you and your team.

Each step is designed to help you build confidence and create a solid foundation for expanding vCISO offerings over time.

Step 1: Define Your Service Scope

Gaining a clear understanding of your current client needs helps you shape a service that’s impactful and manageable. Start by identifying key cybersecurity risks, regulatory pressures, and specific security concerns for each client. Define the resources you’ll dedicate to your new vCISO services, identifying clients who would benefit most from this service model. Start small, focusing on a few clients initially to build capacity, and expand over time. Mapping out your clients’ needs early and determining what potential clients may need will help you create a vCISO service that aligns well with their business priorities.

Step 2: Platform Set Up and Customization

With your service scope defined, you’ll need a system in place to manage client data, security tasks, and reports–whether you use a spreadsheet or a dedicated vCISO platform. Each client’s cybersecurity landscape is unique, and it’s essential to tailor your approach to align with these specifics. However, delivering effective and personalized vCISO services doesn’t have to mean an increase in manual tasks. Tools like Cynomi allow you to create client-specific dashboards along with automating repetitive actions like data collection and report generation–allowing you to focus more on providing strategic, value-added insights to your clients.

Step 3: Conduct Initial Risk and Compliance Assessments

One of the cornerstones of effective vCISO services is conducting a thorough initial assessment or analysis, and this is where built-in tools can offer significant value. Helping clients understand and prioritize risks is essential for effective cybersecurity. Structured workflows enable you to document, categorize, and communicate these risks, ensuring clients focus on areas of highest importance first. This not only demonstrates the value of your vCISO services but also helps clients see how your services align with their business needs.

Along with understanding and communicating risk, clear reporting is fundamental to building client confidence and illustrating your service’s value. Automated reporting tools allow you to create consistent, detailed reports with minimal effort, communicating findings in a business-friendly format that reinforces the importance of proactive security.

Step 4: Set Up Security Policies and Remediation Plans

For many SMBs, setting up structured security policies and developing actionable remediation plans are a crucial step toward effective cybersecurity. Creating tailored policies that address specific risks and requirements for each client, adds essential structure to your vCISO offering. To ensure remediation plans are effective, they need to be aligned with client needs and resources. Engage clients throughout this stage, gathering feedback to refine your recommendations and ensure the proposed actions are both practical and impactful.

Step 5: Launch Your vCISO Service Offering

With your assessments, policies, and reports in place, conduct a final review of your service setup. This is the time to walk through each component with your clients, ensuring they understand the steps involved in their customized vCISO service and the value it brings to their business. Take the time to communicate the importance of continuous cybersecurity improvement, helping clients see how these efforts align with their overall business goals. Clients who understand the value of proactive security will be more likely to engage fully with your vCISO services.

To ensure ongoing alignment with your clients’ needs, set up a recurring review schedule. Regular check-ins help clients track their progress and stay engaged, creating opportunities to expand your services over time.

Sustain and Expand Your vCISO Offering

Once your vCISO service is live, ongoing monitoring is essential to maintain an updated view of each client’s security posture. Regular assessments and automated monitoring help you stay proactive and ensure your services continue delivering relevant, high-value support.

As you develop relationships with clients, you may find additional needs or areas where you can add value. Automated reports and insights can reveal areas where clients would benefit from expanded services, enabling you to offer more comprehensive support as your vCISO service matures.

Scaling a vCISO service doesn’t have to be a resource-intensive process. By building efficiency and automation into your service model, you can expand over time without a significant increase in workload, allowing you to reach more clients and deliver consistent, high-quality security guidance.

To learn more about becoming or growing your vCISO services and how Cynomi can help, check out the vCISO Academy.

The Essential Business Continuity Plan Template [DOC]

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 4 November, 2024

vCISO Community Templates

The Essential Business Continuity Plan Template

Many organizations neglect disaster scenarios and fail to prepare for them in the battle against malicious threats. But we’ve all heard the CrowdStrike story and learned the risks of failing to take action. Cybersecurity regulations and the growing risks associated with the rise in sophisticated cybercrime have driven businesses to establish cybersecurity policies and employ the services of managed security service providers (MSSPs) to address the threats.

Dubbed one of the largest (and most expensive) IT outages to date, the CrowdStrike incident made it clearer than ever before that businesses and organizations must plan and prepare for disasters that can impact (or fully disable) operations—a process called business continuity planning.

What is a business continuity plan template?

Business continuity is the ability of an organization to minimize disruption to operations while rapidly adapting to unforeseen circumstances, such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, critical third-party service provider failures, accidents, and other adverse events.

Organizations’ IT leaders and continuity specialists use a business continuity plan (BCP) to prepare for emergencies. Compliance with local governmental and industry standards (such as ISO 22301) is often required.

Since every business is faced with different threats to business continuity, each needs its own custom-tailored business continuity plan that considers the organization’s unique operational requirements. However, adopting a structured business continuity plan template can help ensure that each of your clients gets a comprehensive but accurate set of checklists and guidelines to implement business continuity effectively across departments.

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) vs. Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP)

While business continuity and disaster recovery are frequently used synonymously, the two represent different organizational functions and integrate differently into your client’s overall business disaster management strategies.

A business continuity plan is kind of like a lifeboat—its goal is to ensure that business operations continue through and during a crisis, minimizing the impact of a catastrophic event when the “boat” starts to sink.

Disaster recovery plans (DRPs) focus on a disaster’s aftermath. These plans are designed to reestablish access to services and data and restore lost or damaged business systems to full operational capacity after a catastrophic IT event, such as a risk to cyber systems or a power outage at your clients’ headquarters.

In developing a business continuity plan, it’s important to align it with the development of DRPs to have a holistic approach to timing and prioritizing continuity and recovery procedures.

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Why a Business Continuity Plan Template is Absolutely Essential

Continuity of business operations during (and after) a crisis or disaster is critical to building business resilience. To contribute to your clients’ resilience, you must provide them with a business continuity plan template that helps them build it.

In addition to empowering business resilience strategies, business continuity planning helps:

Minimize downtime to protect revenues due to diminished operational capacity.
Safeguard employee wellbeing, data privacy, and job security.
Maintain customer trust and loyalty by ensuring the business can still provide services during a crisis.
Respond quickly and effectively to threats to business operations.
Comply with regulatory requirements, especially common in industries like utilities, infrastructure, and emergency services, as well as the service providers in their supply chains.

For MSPs/MSSPs, business continuity plan templates are essential in producing client-facing business continuity plans. They help ensure the plans you deliver to your clients are comprehensive, relevant, actionable, and easy to customize to each organization’s specific business continuity requirements.

The Essential Business Continuity Plan Template

As we noted previously, no two business continuity plans are the same, so it’s essential to consider and clearly define the goals, objectives, and scope of the business continuity plan in your template. You may also want to add sections, such as those related to temporary evacuation protocols or loss of physical business operations sites. Some sections are mandatory for any business continuity plan, so let’s explore them.

1. Description and Priority of Critical Assets and Services

In this section, provide a table that your client’s business continuity managers can fill with a comprehensive list of all business-critical services they provide to customers and a list of high-risk and business-critical assets and services required for prompt and accurate processing of customer data.

In the tables you design for your client’s business continuity plans, you can include a column to set a numeric priority value for each business-critical service and asset and their customer-facing services. You may need to add columns related to the ownership of the service reliability and accessibility of each customer-facing service, as well as alternatives for mission-critical services when they fail.

2. Continuity Plan Activation Criteria

This section is designed for your clients to outline their worst operational disruption nightmares. In other words, the conditions under which your client’s business continuity plan is executed. To help your clients describe the unexpected (but expected) disaster, include conditions like expected outage duration, level of severity of the disaster event, and an impact analysis for each scenario to measure the impact on the organization’s ongoing operations.

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3. Communication Channels & Alternatives

In the event of a prolonged service disruption, the organization will identify what means will permit communication with clients, employees, partners, and other relevant stakeholders. In this section, it’s important to list numerous communication channels to keep in touch with customers, service providers, and stakeholders to ensure that failure in one channel does not mean your customer’s teams are left in the dark.

4. Key Contacts, Essential Roles & Alternates

Your clients will need to list all the roles essential for restoring and executing each critical service and primary and backup/alternate personnel.

You will need to include a table listing the key contact information essential to each service (and this plan) and potential replacements in case they are not available. Be sure to include the service owner and internal and external technical support that may be necessary to maintain business continuity and recover from the adverse event.

5. Recovery Objectives

Next, your business continuity plan template should include a section listing known recovery objectives for each service. In other words, this part outlines the conditions under which business continuity and restoration have been completed. These may include regulatory requirements and business obligations, such as service-level agreement information.

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6. Recovery Sequence for the Service

Perhaps one of the most important sections of any business continuity plan is the list of actions that must be completed to fully recover from adverse events and return to normal business operations. Instruct your customers to list step-by-step instructions for recovering mission-critical services, maintaining operations while the crisis is being managed, and resuming normal operations.

7. Plans of Action

Organizations can, should, and are often legally obligated to run regular risk assessments and follow a comprehensive vulnerability management strategy. In this section, your clients will need to list all the potential conditions identified through these assessments and detail the response actions to each adverse event. For example, this section might include evacuation plans in case of a fire at the HQ and available mitigation measures such as fire extinguishers and sprinklers.

8. Requirements for Compliance with Laws, Regulations, and Rules

In many cases, you will need to include a separate section for your clients to identify and list legal requirements that must be considered when performing continuity planning. For example, some industry-specific regulations require that businesses take certain measures to ensure service availability or encrypt data backups according to certain encryption standards.

9. Security or Access Issues

Describe any known security or access issues important to accessing the alternate sites, or security considerations in case of plan activation outside of normal operating hours. Consider both physical and logical access. For example, your clients may need to include essential employees’ home IP addresses in the RMM trusted IP list when a disaster requires the activation of work-from-home (WFH) policies.

10. Key Documentation

Your clients have the option to link to technical manuals, reference guides, and other supporting materials that may be necessary to restore service operations. Since this business continuity plan will be exposed to employees, partners, and third-party service providers, be sure to proof all documents and files for private information like passwords, API tokens, and encryption keys.

11. Plan Location, Access, Maintenance, Approval and Execution Authority

Last but not least, this section covers the approval, execution, and maintenance of the business continuity plan you’ve generated for your client. Here, your client must list the executives responsible for approving the plan and conducting the required annual review process, as well as the location of the document, dissemination of copies, and the processes for annual reviews and adjustments to the BCP.

How MSPs/MSSPs Support Business Continuity Plans

Small and medium organizations are especially vulnerable to catastrophes like the Crowdstrike outage or a ransomware attack that paralyzes all business operations and damages digital security. Since SMBs often lack the resources and in-house skills to develop their own BCPs, they rely on MSPs and MSSPs to support them in their business continuity planning and, if a crisis comes, its execution.

For MSPs/MSSPs, this is an opportunity to help their SMB clients with long-term business resilience planning and develop a comprehensive BCP alongside a proactive protection strategy against cyber attacks.

Business Continuity Planning at Scale with Cynomi

The business continuity plan template outlined in this article can serve your needs if you run an MSP/MSSP operation serving relatively small organizations. This can be a good basis for a customized business continuity plan per client. Suppose you’re looking to provide cybersecurity management services to multiple clients who may require multiple BCPs for business units and departments. In that case, you need a platform that will help you manage your clients’ cybersecurity at scale.

With Cynomi, you will be provided with a customized business continuity policy per client with a click of a button. Cynomi provides you with a step-by-step plan so you can create a BCP per client more easily. It also supports the implementation and tracking of the BCP for your clients’ specific needs. Cynomi enables you to evaluate and analyze your clients’ disaster readiness, build detailed policies with actionable tasks, track and measure progress, and generate executive status reports with a single click.

Request a demo to get started.

How to Perform a Quantitative Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 15 October, 2024

Education

How to Perform a Quantitative Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity

Cybercrime is the ultimate headline-grabbing topic, garnering attention and gossip from the tech industry, journalists, and the general public alike. Getting mentioned in the small print is a disaster for any brand’s carefully crafted reputation, not to mention the financial and legal consequences that loom overhead.

According to some estimates, the global cost of cybercrime will inflate to a dizzying $23.84 trillion by 2027. As a result, the cybersecurity market will grow to a value of around $533.9 billion by 2032, up from $193 billion in 2023. There’s big money in being a cyber villain and even more cash to make as a superhero savior.

For managed security service providers (MSSPs), this means ample opportunities to provide clients with the services they need to protect digital assets, business continuity, and market reputation, plus comply with regulatory requirements for data protection and cybersecurity control implementations. One service frequently found in the portfolios of leading MSSPs is quantitative cyber risk assessments, a strategy that helps inform and enhance clients’ cybersecurity posture.

What is a quantitative risk assessment?

A quantitative risk assessment (QRA) in cybersecurity, also known as cyber risk quantification (CRQ) is the process of assigning numerical values to the financial impact of cyber events on an organization.

Quantitative risk assessments use numerical data that can be measured and calculated to supply actionable insights. The insights generated by the quantitative risk assessment method in cybersecurity are typically expressed in monetary terms (like annual rate of occurrence and annual loss expectancy). The goal is to direct the focus of cybersecurity efforts and the distribution of budgets to address the most critical issues and vulnerabilities that put the business at risk, aiming to be repeatable and provide clear insights to all relevant stakeholders.

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Qualitative vs Quantitative Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity

Quantitative and qualitative approaches to cyber risk assessment are the two main methodologies employed in cyber risk analysis. While quantitative risk assessments rely on measurable and concrete data, qualitative risk assessments depend on the expertise and judgment of the stakeholders involved in the risk assessment process.

Whereas the insights generated by quantitative risk assessments are typically expressed in monetary terms, risk impact in qualitative cyber risk analysis is frequently categorized as low, medium, or high, with the risk of occurrence expressed in percentages. In addition, while qualitative risk assessments are usually easier and much quicker to execute, they can be influenced by biases and are less objective than quantitative cyber risk assessments.

When it comes to conducting a comprehensive cyber risk assessment, combining both quantitative and qualitative risk assessment methods is key to gaining a holistic understanding of the specific cyber risk factors every organization must address.

With quantitative analysis, you can uncover more potentially invisible threats that qualitative analysis can help contextualize for a broader view and deeper understanding of each potential risk to the systems of a specific organization. This approach is critical in making informed decisions and effectively managing cyber risk.

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How to Perform a Quantitative Risk Assessment in Cybersecurity

1. Prepare Your Data

A quantitative risk assessment in cybersecurity requires, first and foremost, a significant amount of internal and external data sources. These include cyber intelligence feeds, SOC logs, root cause analysis documents, control effectiveness reports, and other governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) inputs, to name a few. All this information must be standardized and normalized to ensure accuracy and consistency before you can begin the step-by-step process of cyber risk quantification.

2. Identify Critical Assets

Before you can quantify risk, you must understand what you need to protect in the first place. Begin by comprehensively identifying and categorizing your client’s critical assets, including risk assessment software, hardware, data records (physical and digital), reputational variables, and even employees whose absence or compromise may negatively impact business operations.

3. Assign Asset Values

Not all assets need the same level of protection and cybersecurity investment. Once you have all business assets cataloged, you will need to determine how much impact a compromise of each asset may have on the business. Factors to consider in asset valuation include access to sensitive data or controls and their role in supporting smooth business operations.

4. Conduct a Vulnerability Study

Next, you must identify the risk factors for each high-value asset you’ve identified and evaluated. This step entails conducting a vulnerability study that explores the required threat detection strategies, inherent vulnerabilities, data sensitivity, configuration drift gaps, and other risks relevant to the specific clients for which you are conducting the quantitative risk assessment.

The vulnerability study also entails analyzing the severity and exploitability of vulnerabilities that may put high-value assets at risk. The data in a vulnerability study typically comes from vulnerability scanners (some platforms, such as Cynomi’s vCISO, have vulnerability scanners built-in), incident response reports, threat intelligence feeds, and more.

5. Estimate the Frequency and Loss Expectancy for Each Risk Factor

Now, it’s the challenging part of quantifying both the impact and likelihood of threat scenarios. Depending on your modeling framework of choice, this may entail estimating the Annualized Rate of Occurrence (ARO) and the Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) for each risk factor using historical data, expert opinions, and industry benchmarks. These key variables make it much easier to prioritize high-impact scenarios with high likelihood while putting a “price tag” on each.

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6. Aggregate and Communicate Your Findings

Numbers don’t mean much if you don’t communicate them to client stakeholders in a way that promotes action. With the risk scores you’ve calculated, you can begin to outline the client’s overall risk posture. Since all the values are expressed in monetary terms, communicating them to management and decision-makers should be a lot easier, and enable educated engineering capital appropriation.

Be sure to present the findings using visual aids like charts, graphs, heat maps, risk distribution charts, and any other method or format you think is best to help stakeholders (including non-technical ones) fully comprehend the risk landscape in relation to security frameworks like NIST.

7. Monitor and Update

Cyber threats change, and clients grow, adopting new technologies and making new hires. Therefore, last year’s cyber risk quantification methods and resources may no longer be relevant. In some organizations, change can be even more rapid, with regular updates needed to the cyber risk quantification processes and data sources on a constant and continuous basis.

That said, updating the quantitive risk assessment in cybersecurity is much easier than the initial painstakingly long and complex task of gathering and standardizing data and aligning client risk strategies with cybersecurity efforts.

Streamlining Quantitative Risk Assessment at Scale with Cynomi

Comprehensive and effective quantitative risk assessment in cybersecurity is no easy feat. It requires huge resource investments and a team of skilled professionals, and it frequently consumes a great deal of time and resources from everyone involved.

However, MSP/MSSPs can streamline and automate cyber risk quantification using your existing resources and headcount with Cynomi. Cynomi is a vCISO platform combining proprietary AI algorithms with CISO-level knowledge to dramatically reduce the manual work in conducting regular quantitative risk assessments for multiple clients.

With Cynomi, MSPs/MSSPs can shorten the completion time of quantitative risk assessments from weeks to hours with built-in self-guided discovery questionnaires that help you gain visibility into your clients’ cybersecurity posture. By automatically delivering scans and questionnaires according to the cyber profile of each client, Cynomi streamlines quantitative risk assessment processes to uncover critical vulnerabilities without extensive manual data entry and analysis.

Request a demo to see why Cynomi is a world-leading choice for comprehensive qualitative risk assessments.

The Rise of vCISO Services for MSSPs and MSPs

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 16 September, 2024

vCISO Community

The Rise of vCISO Services for MSSPs and MSPs

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, the demand for vCISO services is growing at an unprecedented rate. With 86% of MSPs and MSSPs planning to offer vCISO services in 2024, it’s clear that the industry is recognizing the immense value these services provide.

Cynomi CEO, David Primor, sat down to explain the role Cynomi plays at the forefront of this shift, with the world’s only AI-driven vCISO platform that empowers MSSPs and MSPs to start and scale their vCISO offerings.

Be sure to check out the full video of the interview covering these topics for more insights.

Why is there a Surge in Demand for vCISO Services?

David highlights, “We see more and more companies calling for [cybersecurity] help [for] different reasons”:

Rising Cyber Attacks: SMBs and SMEs are experiencing a surge in cyber attacks and often lack the resources to defend themselves effectively.
Regulations and Compliance: Stringent regulations and compliance requirements are becoming increasingly difficult for companies without CISOs to follow.
Insurance Challenges: Obtaining cyber insurance is becoming more challenging, necessitating robust security measures.
Third-Party Risks: Companies need to manage security risks associated with third-party vendors.
Client Requirements: More and more clients are demanding that their vendors demonstrate robust cybersecurity measures.

What are the Benefits of vCISO Services for MSSPs and MSPs and Their Client?

vCISO services encompass a wide range of activities aimed at enhancing an organization’s cybersecurity posture through building and enforcing policies. These policies could be related to technology tools (for example email security or endpoint security), processes (such as access management), and people (HR policies for example).

A vCISO would assess the organization’s current security posture, identify the gaps in security and framework compliance, and create a remediation plan. They would define the most important policies aligning with their priorities and monitor the progress while those policies are implemented.

Whether it’s daily cyber maintenance or managing a security breach, vCISO services offer significant advantages for both organizations and service providers:

For Security Management Seeking Organizations

Security Partner: Working with an expert partner is critical in an area where there is so much at stake. When it comes to security, peace of mind is what most organizations look for. Ensuring all your cybersecurity needs are fully managed, the right frameworks are complied with, and security procedures are in place means considerable legal repercussions and security risks are mitigated.
Improved Security Posture: Through comprehensive gap analysis, clients gain a better understanding of their security gaps and receive a clear roadmap to address them. By identifying and addressing security gaps, clients are less likely to experience data breaches, better meet compliance requirements, and reduce the risk of disruptions caused by cyber incidents. Providing peace of mind and allowing businesses to focus on their core activities without worrying about security threats.

For MSPs

Strengthened Client Relationships: Regular assessments build trust with clients, demonstrating a proactive approach to security and showing that the service provider is consistently monitoring and addressing potential vulnerabilities. This ongoing vigilance reassures clients that their security is being managed diligently, reducing the risk of breaches and ensuring compliance with industry standards.
New Revenue Streams: Organizations realize they need enhanced security support when they identify gaps, which can be highlighted through comprehensive risk assessments. This opens the door for clients to better understand their security needs and opt in for greater security options based on your expanded service offerings, thus boosting profitability and business growth.
Competitive Differentiation: Offering vCISO services helps MSSPs and MSPs stand out in a crowded market by showcasing advanced capabilities and a comprehensive cybersecurity approach. Not all providers offer vCISO services, enabling MSPs and MSSPs to attract a broader client base seeking specialized security services that are not commonly available.

How do thousands of MSPs and MSSPs start and scale vCISO services?

There are many CISOs, MSPs, and MSSPs that want to provide vCISO services but are unable to due to a lack of resources. This is where a particular vCISO platform comes into play.

MSPs and MSSPs across the globe benefit from Cynomi’s AI driven vCISO platform built exclusively for service providers. Using Cynomi, service providers streamline the management of strategic cybersecurity and compliance, making the process both efficient and standardized.

Cynomi addresses the challenges in this area through its innovative platform:

Closing the Skill Gap: Cynomi leverages AI to automate time-consuming tasks, enabling IT or junior security professionals to perform CISO-level work.
Improving Efficiency: The platform streamlines processes for risk assessment, compliance readiness, and security policy creation, significantly reducing manual work.
Value Realization: Cynomi provides simple, digestible reports that clearly articulate the value of services, enhancing client communication and demonstrating progress over time.

A New Era in Cybersecurity

The rise of vCISO services represents a significant shift in the cybersecurity landscape, offering strategic advantages for both service providers and their clients. By leveraging Cynomi’s AI-driven platform, MSSPs and MSPs can enhance their service offerings, build stronger client relationships, and achieve greater operational efficiency. As the demand for vCISO services continues to grow, Cynomi is leading the way in empowering service providers to meet this need effectively and profitably.

Check out the full interview with CEO, David Primor to start improving your security offerings today.

Top 10 Compliance Automation Tools for 2024

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 4 September, 2024

vCISO Community

Top 10 Compliance Automation Tools for 2024

Most businesses would agree that there are three realities in the world you can’t avoid: death, taxes, and compliance regulations. It’s a scary thought, even for the most compliance-focused organizations.

Non-compliance can result in costly penalties, legal charges, and damage to a company’s reputation. Meta, with a fine of 1.2 billion euros, holds the largest EDPB fine for non-conformity.

MSPs/MSSPs are on hand to help, but the task can be mammoth. For example, consider an MSP that oversees IT functions for multiple e-commerce businesses across the European Union. Therefore, their clients must follow GDPR to ensure the safety of customers’ data.

Without automation, the MSP team must manually handle tasks like data mapping, consent management, and breach notifications. Such manual work makes scaling services difficult and necessitates a lot of internal resources, which is where compliance automation tools come into play.

What are compliance automation tools?

Compliance automation tools are software solutions that allow MSPs/MSSPs to help clients meet regulatory standards more easily. MSPs/MSSPs of all sizes, especially those with clients who handle sensitive data or work in regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and e-commerce, can benefit from compliance automation tools.

The main goal of these tools is to make compliance more efficient and less resource-intensive. They provide features like real-time monitoring, automatic updates to regulatory changes, and detailed reporting, helping MSPs/MSSPs quickly identify and fix any issues.

Benefits of Compliance Automation Tools

Time Savings: Reduces time spent on manual processes like mapping data or preparing for audits, enabling businesses to focus on their core activities.
Cost Efficiency: MSPs/MSSPs can use this software instead of hiring specific staff to manage compliance.
Scalability: Compliance automation tools enable MSPs and MSSPs to scale their compliance services without a proportional increase in workload or resources.
Improved Accuracy: Reduces the risk of human error, ensuring more accurate and consistent compliance with regulatory standards.
Real-Time Monitoring and Updates: These tools provide real-time monitoring and automatic updates to regulatory changes.

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Types of Compliance Automation Tools

vCISO Platforms: Provide compliance checks and security expertise without needing a full-time CISO. MSPs/MSSPs can scale their compliance services without needing to scale internal resources – simply conduct the assessments and audits through a vCISO platform.
GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) Platforms: GRC tools combine governance, risk management, and compliance to help companies manage regulatory needs, review risks, and implement frameworks.
Vendor Risk Management Tools: Automatically assess vendor compliance, monitor risks, and manage vendor relationships.
Compliance Assessment and Auditing Tools: They automate compliance evaluations, carry out audits, and produce reports to identify non-compliance elements.

Key Features to Look For in a Compliance Automation Tool

Continuous Monitoring: The tool should continuously track clients’ compliance status and identify potential issues.
Automated Reporting: The best tools automatically generate comprehensive customer-facing compliance reports.
Regulatory Updates: You should be able to generate continuous updates on new regulations to help clients maintain compliance.
Integration Capabilities: It should be easy to integrate with existing systems and software.

Top 10 Compliance Automation Tools for 2024

1. Vanta

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Vanta provides a trust management platform to automate compliance tasks by conducting streamlined security reviews across more than twenty compliance frameworks. It replaces manual security audits with ongoing monitoring, providing real-time visibility into MSP clients’ security postures.

Main Features:

Continuous compliance monitoring.
Automated security controls.
Customizable compliance frameworks for specific industry needs.
Simplified audit preparation with pre-built reports and insights.

Best For: Startups and SMEs focusing on quick GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 compliance.

Price: Offers three pricing plans: Core, Collaborate, and Scale.

Review: “Quick to get started, easy to use, ever-growing integrations and features.”

2. Cynomi

Cynomi leverages AI to help MSPs and MSSPs offer comprehensive compliance assessments and automatically maps over 20 compliance frameworks, such as ISO 27001 and CISv8. It generates tailored policies and strategic remediation plans with prioritized tasks, supporting each client’s compliance journey.

Main Features:

Expands MSP/MSSP cybersecurity services into compliance with minimal operational costs.
Customizable discovery questionnaires to quickly assess clients’ cybersecurity and compliance postures.
Automatically maps over 20 frameworks and regulations
Aligns clients’ cyber profiles with industry standards and regulations.
Automates the creation of policies and security plans.
User-friendly dashboard with one-click customer-facing reporting.
Integrates security and compliance management.

Best For: Service providers looking for a multi-tenant, user-friendly platform to manage their clients’ compliance and cybersecurity at scale with minimal resources.

Price: By inquiry.

Review: “Cynomi provides a straight forward easy to understand platform for clients. The assessment questions help guide clients and build a path forward for them.”

3. Onspring

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Onspring provides MSPs with a comprehensive GRC platform that facilitates regulatory management, risk evaluation, and policy deployment.

Main Features:

Customizable workflows.
Risk assessment tools to identify and mitigate potential issues.
Audit management features for efficient tracking and reporting.
Real-time dashboards.

Best For: MSPs/MSSPs needing a highly customizable GRC platform that can integrate with their existing systems.

Price: Custom pricing based on licensing model and requirements.

Review: “Onspring has helped us automate and track licenses, permits, contracts, and assets with ease.”

4. Secureframe

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Secureframe helps businesses automate their compliance processes and manage their security posture for frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA.

Main Features:

Automated evidence collection.
Continuous monitoring.
Integration abilities that are smooth as silk.
Real-time alerts and notifications.

Best For: Rapidly growing MSPs/MSSPs that need to quickly achieve and maintain compliance with multiple standards and require fully automated evidence collection.

Price: By inquiry. Offers four pricing plans: Essentials, Growth, Premium, and Enterprise.

Review: “Secureframe provides comprehensive coverage of security audit preparation.”

5. Sprinto

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Sprinto simplifies compliance by automating security monitoring and audit preparation for frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR.

Main Features:

Automated monitoring to ensure continuous compliance.
Tools for easy audit preparation and management.
Compliance tracking to monitor progress.
Real-time reporting.

Best For: MSPs/MSSPs seeking to automate and streamline the entire compliance lifecycle.

Price: Custom pricing based on business needs.

Review: “Their team was very responsive and helpful, quickly addressing any questions we had.”

6. Thoropass

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Thoropass is a compliance management platform that automates tasks and enables companies to keep up with regulatory demands.

Main Features:

Compliance tracking.
Audit management.
Policy management.
A large ecosystem with cloud service support.
Automated reminders and alerts.

Best For: MSPs/MSSPs in need of a comprehensive compliance solution to handle complex compliance requirements and streamline audit processes.

Price: By inquiry.

Review: “The implementation was beyond easy and would work well for organizations that have little to no audit experience.”

7. Drata

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Drata automates the compliance process for frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR, simplifying the achievement and maintenance of compliance.

Main Features:

Continuous control monitoring for ongoing compliance.
Automated evidence collection for audits.
Real-time compliance status updates and alerts.
Integration with various cloud providers.

Best For: MSPs/MSSPs looking for seamless integration of compliance automation with their existing cloud infrastructure.

Price: By inquiry.

Review: “Amazing support; maturing functionality.”

8. Apptega

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Apptega is a comprehensive platform designed to help MSPs/MSSPs automate SaaS compliance frameworks. It covers all GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) requirements, including risk management and policy development.

Main Features:

Cross-mapping compliance requirements across different frameworks.
AI-supported recommendations for managing risks.
Instructional videos and customer support.

Best For: MSPs/MSSPs needing a straightforward and effective compliance solution.

Price: Offers three pricing plans: Starter, Advanced, and Premium.

Review: “Great for tracking client compliance.”

9. CISOteria

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With AI-driven recommendations, CISOteria provides continuous monitoring and control over your clients’ cyber risks with AI-driven recommendations. Furthermore, it helps you manage strategies, prioritization, audits, and policy implementation.

Main Features:

AI-based threat detection and reduction.
Detailed IT policy management.
Structured incident response workflows.
Progress tracking tools.
Daily cyber risk alerts.

Best For: MSPs/MSSPs needing robust policy enforcement and cyber risk management.

Price: By inquiry, with a free trial available.

Review: “It is a [great] all-in-one platform, but the learning curve is a bit long.”

10. Hyperproof

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Hyperproof offers tools to streamline compliance management, track compliance activities, conduct audits, and generate reports.

Main Features:

Task management.
Real-time dashboards.
Integration with various business systems and tools
Automated reminders and alerts.

Best For: Mid-sized MSPs/MSSPs that need comprehensive task and audit management.

Price: By inquiry.

Review: “The dashboard is very helpful for a quick look and check your company’s compliance status.”

Deliver Compliance at Scale With Cynomi

MSPs/MSSPs must ensure their clients meet regulatory compliance to safeguard customer data, evade huge fines, and protect their image. Compliance automation tools go a long way in simplifying this process, making it less time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Powered by AI, Cynomi is among the best MSP/MSSP software for comprehensive compliance assessments. Cynomi automates manual, time-consuming tasks like mapping frameworks and regulations, risk assessments, and policy creation, allowing service providers to save time and focus on closing compliance gaps for their clients.

With tailored policies and strategic remediation plans, Cynomi simplifies the compliance journey for each client, enabling you to scale these services without additional resource investment or in-house expertise.

Request a demo to explore how Cynomi can transform your compliance management.

From MSP to vCISO: 5 Steps to vCISO Success

Anita Kaneti Publication date: 17 July, 2024

Education vCISO Community

From MSP to vCISO: 5 Steps to vCISO Success

In today’s rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, the role of a CISO is pivotal for any organization. However, not every company can afford a full-time CISO. This is where vCISO services come into play, offering a cost-effective solution for robust cybersecurity oversight.

The demand for vCISO services is skyrocketing. According to a 2022 ConnectWise report, 94% of SMBs would consider using or switching to a new MSP if they offered the “right” cybersecurity solution. In response, 67% of MSPs and MSSPs plan to offer vCISO services by the end of 2024. This growing market presents a prime opportunity for MSPs and MSSPs to expand their services and provide critical security leadership to their clients.

To capitalize on this opportunity, MSPs should avoid common pitfalls. We sat with Jesse Miller to discuss five steps MSPs can take in the first 100 days to offer successful vCISO services. For more actionable tips, watch the full webinar.

5 Steps to vCISO Success in the First 100 Days

The following are five steps MSPs and MSSPs should do in the first 100 days with a new client. These steps can be used as a pathway to success. They are in order, while there will be some overlap, each step should generally waterfall into the next. For example, you may start with parts of step 2 while finishing up parts of step 1.

Step 1: Research (Days 0 -30)

Conducting thorough research and collaborating closely with stakeholders, to discuss and address their needs and security gaps is crucial for grasping your client’s specific security requirements and desires. It’s vital to involve management and ensure they comprehend the importance of cybersecurity, thereby encouraging the implementation of essential measures.

In Jesse’s words, “You’re [going to] be able to speak the language of the business.” This entails looking beyond mere tools and gaining a profound understanding of the business and its needs.

The process involves several steps:

Meet with Management: Initiate the process of discussing and identifying the business’s most critical assets, referred to as the “crown jewels.”
Identify Critical Assets: Determine which aspects of the business are critical. This includes understanding which line-of-business applications are in use.
Assess Data Storage: Audit how and where the data is stored.
Evaluate Impact of Downtime: Investigate the implications of key systems being offline for different durations (e.g., 7 days, 14 days) or being unrecoverable.
Understand Business Impact: Discuss what these potential downtimes or data losses would mean for the business.

Continuous learning is important at this stage. Meet with various departments, stakeholders, management, IT, and other relevant teams to identify and gain access to the right tools and systems. Review vulnerability management reports, and conduct threat intelligence research specific to the client’s industry or vertical and the threat actors targeting them. Analyze all the reports for past security incidents and how they were handled. Review vendor management processes to identify third-party risks. Gathering this information will allow you to create a comprehensive picture of the current security environment, which is crucial for developing an effective security strategy.

Step 2: Understand (Days 0 – 45)

Use tools and platforms to conduct a thorough security risk assessment with various stakeholders, including customers, IT, and engineering teams. This step helps to create a clear picture of the client’s security posture, identify potential risks, and determine the necessary measures to mitigate them. Once the client’s current state is identified, short-term and long-term security needs can be determined based on the findings from the risk assessment.

This process should include a formal gap analysis to highlight the differences between the current state and the desired security posture. Utilize established cybersecurity frameworks like NIST to benchmark the organization’s security practices against industry standards.

Present your findings from a three-filter process:

Risk Without Services: Show clients their risk levels without any security measures, which typically remains high (around 90%).
Risk With Basic Services: Illustrate the risk reduction achieved by basic security services, bringing it down to approximately 60-70%, but highlighting remaining critical issues.
Customized Risk Mitigation: Provide a tailored plan to achieve an acceptable level of risk, showing specific steps to further reduce the risk and improve the security posture.

This sets the stage for developing a targeted remediation plan that aligns with the client’s risk appetite and business goals.

Step 3: Prioritize (Days 15 – 60)

Use a prioritization framework to address the most critical issues first, ensuring that the client’s most significant vulnerabilities are mitigated promptly. Define specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time and budget-bound goals for the security initiatives. Develop a detailed work plan that outlines the necessary steps, timelines, responsible parties, and expected outcomes. Document identified risks along with their likelihood and impact on security and budget.

It’s important to present your plan without overwhelming clients.

Key points include:

Immediate High-Impact Wins: Focus on the top three critical actions to improve security right away.
Long-Term Improvement Plan: Spread out additional necessary actions over the next year to avoid overwhelming the client and users.

This ensures that you develop a steady revenue and profit pipeline by providing valuable security services, creating a virtuous cycle where clients become more secure and MSPs are fairly compensated. The goal is a win-win scenario where both MSP and client benefit, with improved security for the client and sustainable profitable growth for the MSP.

Step 4: Execute and Monitor (Days 30 – 80)

Outline the execution of the security plan and set up continuous monitoring processes. Automation and tools can streamline this process, reducing the time and effort required to manage security tasks while ensuring consistent protection. Monitoring is just as important, if not more important, than the initial setup.

As Jesse puts it, “If we have the right controls in place, and we’ve identified the systems that we need to focus our attention on to make sure that we are safe, we can be resilient against an attack.”

Implement automated systems to handle routine security tasks, such as password resets, report generation, and vulnerability scans. Focus on quick, high-impactful wins to build momentum, demonstrate early success, and establish the ROI. Regularly update and refine security policies based on real-time data and ongoing assessments. Establish a cadence for external scanning and reporting to track improvements and highlight risk reductions over time. By continuously managing and adjusting your remediation plans, you ensure that security measures remain effective and responsive to evolving threats.

Step 5: Report (Days 45 – 100)

This step underlines the importance of comprehensive reporting for MSPs and their clients. Jesse recommends creating tailored reports for different audiences, such as detailed reports for IT managers and summarized and colorful reports for executives and boards. These reports should highlight improvements, identify ongoing risks, and offer clear next steps.

When presenting a report about the attack vector score, you want to tell a story: “We were a 2.2. Then after three months, we became a 3, and now we’re a 5.4.” Start with good news to build confidence and then address areas needing improvement.

This demonstrates a positive trend. Management loves understanding trends. In leadership positions, it’s critical to know whether there is a trend towards the right direction or not. And that is followed by understanding on what needs to be done to continue or start trending positively. Communicate progress at least once a month to maintain transparency and keep the urgency of cybersecurity initiatives at the forefront. Conduct additional assessments periodically to measure progress and realign strategies with the organization’s evolving needs and threat landscape. Use standard reporting templates to ensure consistency and ease of understanding for executives.

The ultimate goal is to create a continuous improvement cycle, ensuring that security measures align with business needs and demonstrate tangible value to stakeholders. This approach helps MSPs position themselves as trusted advisors, fostering strong, profitable client relationships.

Elevate Your MSPs and MSSPs with vCISO Services

Accelerate your vCISO journey with expert onboarding tips from information security specialist Jesse Miller who shares practical strategies and real-life case studies of successful vCISO implementations. These insights will provide you with actionable strategies to implement immediately, helping you to enhance your service offerings and establish your cybersecurity services.

Don’t miss out on these insights—watch now and build yourself up for vCISO success.