What is a V-CISO and Why Do I Need One?

Cyber Management Alliance Ltd's Virtual CISO (V-CISO) service offers organisations access to a pool of experts and experienced cyber security practitioners who take on the role of a Chief Information Security Officer in your business. Our cost-effective V-CISO service brings the experience in leadership and skills to help define, plan and execute a bespoke strategy unique to your organisation.

Our V-CISOs are supported by our compliance and governance team members to ensure we meet all the varying requirements of your business.

Accessing the same skills as the big multinationals

"Our clients have the opportunity to access the same professional advice and guidance that FTSE 100 and other large multi-nationals pay a significant amount of money for, but at a fraction of the price. Our experienced group of trusted advisors become part of your executive team and support you in all areas of cybersecurity and data protection, without you having to pay exhorbitant consultancy fees."

Amar Singh, CEO, Cyber Management Alliance Ltd.

Top 6 reasons our Clients Selected our V-CISO Service

Access world class expertise to increase your cyber security maturity

The recent global ransomware attacks may have CEOs worried but the reality is that most organisations cannot afford a dedicated cyber security team and the associated costs including training, tools and the specialist expertise.

Our clients list the following six reasons why they selected our cybersecurity expertise. They:

Required trusted advise from globally recognised experienced professionals.
Wanted a vendor-neutral perspective, not just someone selling services.
Did not have a full time requirement for a security executive.
Wanted the V-CISO to become an extension of their business.
Wanted the V-CISO to understand office politics and the intricacies of human relationships. A strong stakeholder manager.
Wanted the V-CISO to help align their business against international best practices and standards.

Benefits of our V-CISO Service Offering

Our virtual services are specifically designed for those organisations that require access to experienced information security and data privacy professionals but are unable to hire one themselves either due to business and financial constraints or due to the acute shortage of skilled executives.

Some of the benefits of partnering with Cyber Managament Alliance Ltd include:

Significant Cost Savings: Our flexible scale-up or scale-down service allows you to match your changing security requirements and threat landscape while making tangible cost savings.
Impartial, Vendor Neutral Advice: Our V-CISO will always act in your best interest to reduce your overall risk exposure and to ensure maximum value of your current and future cybersecurity investments.

Flexible to Your Needs: We recognise that your business faces constant change and our solution scales to your needs and business requirements.
Increased Board and Senior Executive Engagement: Our V-CISO has the experience to educate and present to all types of senior executives, board members and non-technical senior staff.

Put simply, our V-CISO can help with planning & support, communicating and influencing, asessing and maintaing and taking a lead on all things realted to cyber security and information security.

Our V-CISO Service Features

Once you are onboarded as a V-CISO customer you have access to the following list of services,

Experienced Cyber Security Practioners: Access to verifiable expert individuals who have held leadership CISO roles and have a wealth of industry experience.
Data Breach Ready: Our V-CISO will oversee and co-ordinate to ensure your business is prepared to deal with data breaches and incidents.
Regulatory Compliance and Governance: Our V-CISO will manage and communicate with regulators for all data privacy and information security requests on your behalf.
Specialist Training Included: Our V-CISOs are experienced practitioners and offer specialist management focused cyber security training as part of the V-CISO service. Depending on your requirement we can deliver our flagship CIPR (Cyber Incident Planning & Response) training or our non-technical executive CSPE (Cyber Security & Privacy Essentials) training.

Evaluate, Direct and Monitor

Strategic and tactical leadership on information assurance, governance and information risk management.
Trusted security advisory on information security and data privacy.
Strategic and tactical advice to address existing and evolving security threats.
Representation for the client in regulatory queries.
Participation and leadership in meetings, committees and interaction with board meetings and other senior executives.
Help identify, assess and select cost efficient technologies.

Manage, Train and Assess

Manage and oversee vulnerability assessments.
Manage and oversee security penetration tests.
Manage and oversee privacy impact assessments.
Creation, review and optimisation of Incident response plans.
Planning and delivery of security awareness training to exectives and the oversight of the larger information security training across the organisation including nformation security training and awareness for all staff.
Management of Information Security Team (if neccessary).

Align, plan and organise

Create, review and optimisation of existing information security governance and risk management framework.
Creation, review and optimisation of security policy, process, and procedures
Cyber resiliency and incident response maturity so as to better detect and respond to cyber attacks.
Framework for defense in depth with suitable preventive, detective, corrective and recovery controls.
Security architecture, design and assurance frameworks.
Management of Security compliance and aligning with industry best practice and standards such as ISO 27001:2013

What our clients have to say:

“Amar and the team at Cyber Management Alliance have been a huge help in getting our firm positioned to deal with cyber security risk. Having opened our eyes to the variety and scale of challenges we face, and the potential financial consequences, they worked closely with us to improve our infrastructure, processes and understanding to embed cyber awareness into the firm.”

James C, CEO - UK Hedge Fund

Save Over 80% in Full Time CISO salary, Every Year!

A simple two day a month Virtual CISO plan with Cyber Management Alliance would cost you in the region of £24,000 per annum where as, a full time, experienced CISO, on average, would set you back approximately £120,000 per year (not including hiring costs, sick pay, holiday pay and training costs and possibly redundancy payments).

V-CISO Service Options

We offer a number of flexible solutions in terms accessing our V-CISO service:

Retained: On a monthly contract that you can scale-up or scale-down.
On a Project basis: On a time & material basis our V-CISO will oversee the whole project and or transformation.

This service is not limited to the UK and is available internationally.

Our Clients

Our clients include various hedge funds, boutique wealth management firms, publishing companies and polices forces. For more details about our customers feel free to get in touch with us.

Head of Our V-CISO Services Team

Amar Singh has a long hisotry and experience in data privacy and Information Security and has served as CISO for various companies, including News International (now News UK), SABMiller, Gala Coral, Euromoney and Elsevier. Amar, amongst various other activities, is a Global Chief Information Security Officer and Trusted Advisor to a number of organisations including a FTSE 100 Firms and is Chair of the ISACA UK Security Advisory Groups.

Amar has managed all types of Security Assessments and readiness projects in preparation for all types of accreditations including PCI, SOX, IS0 27001, COBIT and risk management, audit, business continuity while being aware of TCP/IP, network security, secure software development, VPNs, mobile security, hacking techniques, database security, log management, access and authorization, email security and awareness of encryption algorithms. He has the ability and experience of dealing with auditors, both internal and external.

Amar is an industry acknowledged expert and public speaker and is regularly invited to speak and share his insights by some of the largest and most respected organisations in the world including:

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"Amar brings a unique mix of business strategy, technical and managerial experience. He is a thought leader on a large number of cyber related topics including response planning in event of a major cyber incident, responding to cyber attacks, training for senior executives and setting the correct agenda at board level."

Neil Curran

CITI BANK
"Amar is marvelous in his knowledge and experience on cyber security and data protection. He comes with a vast experience and knowledge bank. I have not seen many professionals like him in the industry, as he has a deep technical understanding and a very good commercial and business focused mindset."

Kinshuk De, MTech (IIT), MBA, Chevening Fellow

Head-Business Operations @ Enterprise Security Risk Managment
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
"Amar is a knowledge leader in the domain of IT Security, Privacy, GRC and I have benefitted from his Cyber Business Executive Programme at Shrivenham, U.K. Now it is a life long connection and an opportunity to discuss Cyber with a reliable friend as and when I need."

Abhik Chaudhuri

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
"I've enjoyed sharing information with Amar, meeting over coffee's to discuss emerging trends in Cyber and learning about the challenges faced by a CISO within a large organisation. I continue to look forward to Amars publications on Information Security and find him a very interesting person to work with."

Adam Hawthorne

News International
"Amar is unique; A great person with a very creative and fresh approach to information security & risk management. He is very experienced professional, a very good influencer and finds always the right way to communicate."

Marcus Burkert

Cyberr Security Manager KPMG
"Amar was a keynote speaker as well as a panelist on the Hackers versus CISOs debate at the 2012 Global CISO Forum. He brought a lot of expertise and insight to the event and was a major contributor to the overall success. He was great to work with and extremely generous with his time and knowledge."

Amber Pedroncelli

EC-Council
"Amar is unique; A thorough professional he is both technically sound and experienced in engaging and winning over executive leadership and has the acumen to drive the Information Security message throughout the organisation."

Chris Elleman

Manager, Solutions Architecture
"I like Amar's unique and fresh approach to information security & risk management. Very business-like with a constant focus on practical Information security I am greatly impressed with the way he deals with all level of management including Senior C level executives to the super techies and of course us project managers. A true professional in every sense."

Kathan Sidar

Senior Project Manager at National Grid
"Working with Amar I found him to be a person with integrity and a deep proficiency in IT Security & Assurance solutions. He has been instrumental in designing and implementing a large IDS SIEM project. Amar is insightful, multi-skilled and an expert on all Information Security & Information Assurance matters. He is experienced, reliable, energetic, motivated and a result driven perfectionist."

Chris Pay LCCP GCCC CRISC CISSP CISM

Atos International
"I worked with Amar on a complex requirement that he was trying to fulfil. He is a proficient communicator and was able to dissect the request down into smaller, measurable pieces of work."

Bhupendra Hirani

Senior IT Security Consultant
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
"Amar is a unique individual, able to look at the minute detail of a security issue whilst holding onto a commercially aware "bigger picture". His largest impact was the design, procurement and implementation of a new firewall solution for the Trust which was a remarkably smooth project."

Tony Ball
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
"Amar added considerable technical value by a bringing high risk project back on track.He qualified and coherently presented technical risks & issues to enable 3rd party suppliers & the internal delivery team to mitigate appropriately."

Andy Siddiqi
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
"I highly recommend Amar for both his technical skill and personal approach, and he should be considered a significant asset for any company fortunate enough to retain his services."

Glenn Clarke
Lead Secure Operations Authority at Atos IT Solutions and Services
"Amar is able to understand requirements within a short period of time and able to define work packages necessary to resolve them. He could happily delegate the tasks or undertake them himself. Amar is very capable of ensuring the security of business critical UNIX systems to a very high standard."

Gary Dawkin
European General Manager Security at Siemens
"While working with Amar, I was impressed by his breadth of knowledge around security related matters, particularly in respect to the work we were carrying out. He displays honesty and integrity at all levels, and is more than capable at explaining issues to both customers and colleagues in a language suitable to the audience."

Donal Casey
Senior IT Security Consultant

Gala Coral Group
"Amar is a very gifted and tallented consultant. Not one to back away from tough challenges Amar takes everything head on with good pace. A very reliable and sensible consultant who I would certainly enagage the services of in the future."

Peter Bassill
Technical Project Manager (Networks & Security)
BP
"I have worked with Amar on several projects at BP. As well as being competant across a wide range of technologies, Amar's dedication and customer focus always made him a pleasure to work with!"

Christian Thomas
BP
"Amar was extremly customer focused and has always listened to their needs and wishes. It was a considerable experience to work together with Amar. I wish him all the best for his private and professional future."

Markus Krieger
Head of Project Delivery R&M IT&S FVC E&A at BP
"Amar provided the network support expertise on one of my key high profile projects and regularly exceeded expectations in delivery. During troubleshooting exercises, his determination to resolve network connectivity issues led to problems being identifed, resolved and not repeated. I highly recommend Amar for this specialist Networks expertise."

Prashan Thiagarajah
Director - Chili Programme at BP Exploration Operating Company Limited
"Amar continually demonstrated excellence during our project at BP. Whilst I expected his technical design, development and troubleshooting skills to be good, I was staggered by his tenacity and willingness to go the extra mile. Amar strived to achieve success going well above and beyond normal expectations. He is an exceptional individual."

Iain Murray
Cloud Onboarding Lead at Hewlett-Packard
"Besides being a joy to work with, Amar is a take-charge person who is able to present creative ideas and communicate the benefits. I highly recommend Amar. He is a very technical IT Security team player with years of experience as a senior consultant and would make a great asset to any organization!"

Ron Meridor
Security and control at Lloyds
"It was a pleasure to work with Amar. He demonstrated some very good technical security skills as well as communication skills. He helped progessing a very complex global data correlation project under a lot of pressure."

Sylvain Martinez
Red Team Lead
"Amar is the chap you need to get results. He is able to get his objectives met despite the many beaurocratic and other obstacles thrown at him. Thanks to Amar we now have effective and manageable auditing for one of our most critical applications."

Alan Nolan-Davies

Oracle DBA at Barclays Investment Bank
"Amar was responsible for the Security Applications at BP. His technical skills and professionalism meant that he was able to progess the engineering through beta and into production."

Sreenivas Malladi
IT Consultant at Aditya Consultancy Limited
"Amar is a seasoned security professional with a great attitude and willingness to do what it takes to get the job done."

Les Gibbs
IT Security Consultant
Reuters
"First introduced to Amar due to a number of projects during my time at Reuters. Amar displayed a professional and 'can do' attitude. Works hard to ensure compliance and alignment to the company's standards and procedures. But at the same time is pragmatic and challenging, he also ensures he keeps an eye getting the project through on time and on budget."

Andy Walker-Hebborn
Group Control Manager at BP
"To complete a top grade security project you need a top grade professional senior security consultant. Amar is one of the best Security professionals out there and he was extremely valuable to my mega project. As a project resource he delivered on time. As a security professional he never let security out of his objectives. I would highly recommend Amar anytime."

Chris Birch
CIO at News UK
"Amar has a good working knowledge of Security Systems. Well qualified and experienced. At Reuters he had demonstrated a good understanding of Checkpoint security systems."

Clement Leung
NSX Virtualisation Consultant at VMware
"I worked with Amar in Reuters on a multi-million pound Security Implementation consultation project involving VOIP and other network security infrastructure devices. I found Amar to be very proficient and technically astute. Amar offers an excellent technical background combined with an expert knowledge of security, I would have no hesitation in recommending his services."

Mario Gavrielides, PMP
Senior Project Manager, News UK
"Amar worked for me for a period of 2 years his knowledge on Firewalls and security in general, he was an asset to my team. He is hard worker who ensures the job is done to a high standard and is excellent with customers."

Chris Meehan
Director of Information Security at Sky
"When you need a THOROUGH professional in the IT Security world I would
highly recommend Amar Singh. Apart from being a IT Security Pro, Amar knows
how to deal with upper management."

Emir Arslanagic
Experienced Cyber Security Leader

Virtual CISO and Trusted Advisory Services in Cyber and Information Security