The Challenge
ECI aimed to scale its GRC and cybersecurity advisory services, but manual, senior-dependent assessments limited capacity, increased delivery costs, and slowed growth.
The Solution
Cynomi became ECI’s GRC backbone, streamlining assessments, standardizing dashboards for every client, and enabling scalable, advisor-led security and compliance management.
The Impact
ECI expanded its client base, improved margins, and scaled high-quality GRC services by operating with greater efficiency.
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ECI story
Chad Fullerton · VP of Information Security, ECI
I think that the thing Cynomi does better than everybody else that I’ve seen is ease of use and ease of understanding. My name is Chad Fullerton and I’m the Vice President of Information Security at ECI. ECI is the leading managed service provider to the financial services industry.
I think the biggest pain points prior to working with Cynomi were around the time it would take us to conduct security assessments, combined with the level of expertise and skill that we’d have to have in-house. We actually worked with a different GRC tool and found that it didn’t have the same ease of use that Cynomi brought to the table.
So Cynomi has really bridged the gap as a tool set that allows us to take people who are not as senior, skilled, and qualified, but lets them deliver the same level of service as somebody with 10 years of experience. We were able to cut the time it takes us to do a security assessment by about 50%. That leads to about 50% time savings of human capital, and combined with its ability to let us use more junior talent to conduct those security assessments, saving revenue on human capital, it really allowed us to increase our margin on GRC by about 20%.
I like that it’s able to take complex IT and security terminology and put it into an action plan for the average IT or security person to go and run with. We’re now just driving pure profit. There’s really no better platform that I’ve experienced to go with. A hundred percent of my GRC customers get a Cynomi dashboard. There’s no exception. It’s the backbone of our offering.
What Cynomi’s brought to the table is the ability to visualize and sell GRC in a way that allows us to present, to demo, and to make obvious what we’re bringing to the table. It’s also allowed us to go after markets that ECI as an MSP maybe can’t get into, and to generate additional SOPs and upsell based off of those SOPs.
My experience with the Cynomi team has been incredibly positive. It’s been great for me, it’s been great for my team, and we’ve more than doubled our client base just since working with Cynomi. I would absolutely recommend Cynomi to anyone interested in bringing on a GRC partner to provide that kind of infrastructure for their GRC service.
What Our Team Loves About Cynomi
The Full Story
Building a Strategic Advisory Practice
ECI, a managed services and cybersecurity provider focused on the financial services industry, set out to build a scalable, repeatable advisory practice that delivers business-centric insights and high value at scale.
Challenges of Growth and Consistency
ECI’s manual assessment workflows, customized templates, and resource-heavy processes made it difficult to scale advisory services. Each assessment consumed excessive time and senior expertise, limiting throughput, raising costs, and hampering growth in a competitive market.
Implementing Cynomi
By adopting Cynomi, ECI replaced disconnected templates and manual spreadsheets with a centralized assessment platform that became the core of its GRC service. Automated workflows enabled advisors to complete structured assessments far more efficiently, cutting assessment time in half and improving margins, while freeing senior staff for strategic work. Cynomi’s visual dashboards also improved client engagement.
Driving Growth and Client Value
With Cynomi as the foundation of its advisory offering, ECI shifted from one-off assessments to recurring, high-value, advisory engagements that strengthened long-term client relationships. The platform’s visual dashboards and structured outputs improved communication with business leaders, helping advisors move conversations beyond compliance checklists to broader security strategy. Cynomi helped ECI scale delivery without adding proportional headcount, creating a competitive advantage.
The Full Story
ECI specializes in providing managed services and security solutions to the financial services sector, focusing on alternative investments and private equity. Their offerings include managed XDR, governance, risk and compliance (GRC), penetration testing, and vulnerability management.
- Industry: IT & Cybersecurity Services
- Focus: GRC, vCISO Services, Managed Detection & Response
- Founded: 1995
- Headquarters: United States
Why ECI chose Cynomi
ECI’s problem was advisory delivery that couldn’t scale beyond its senior team. Every GRC and vCISO engagement demanded manual, template-heavy assessments that only senior staff could run, capping capacity and driving up delivery costs. Cynomi became ECI’s GRC backbone – a centralized platform that standardizes assessments and dashboards so junior staff can deliver senior-level work. That’s what cut assessment time in half, lifted margins by 30%, and let ECI move from one-off assessments to recurring advisory engagements, growing its client base without adding proportional headcount.
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