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World-Class Cybersecurity Professionals at your Service

Virtual CISO (vCISO) Consulting Services

Hands On, full-support 'Security As a Service', specifically designed for organisations that require access to experienced cybersecurity, governance, risk and compliance professionals. 

 

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Biggest challenges in Cybersecurity Consultancy

Why hire a Virtual CISO or vCISO?

The cybersecurity industry is riddled with a shortage of skilled personnel, making it very difficult for organisations to hire effective cybersecurity staff and CISOs. This problem is amplified for start-ups and small-to-medium businesses who often also lack the massive budgets required to hire and retain the right kind of people. Our Virtual CISO services or 'CISO as a Service' can help plug the many gaps that exist in the current landscape. Our Virtual CISO advisors bring rich, cross-industry experience to fulfill your specific organisational needs. 

Skills shortage making it very expensive to hire full-time staff

Dearth of personnel with broad knowledge & multi-sector context

Complex advice by most external consultancies, designed to confuse and increase spend

Inflexible & Rigid Approach to Billing & Services + Complicated Tactics to stretch length of contract

Three Key Benefits of our vCISO Service

Cost Effective Professionals (CISO Advisors) at your beck and call

Experienced security consultants at a fraction of the cost!

Join our vCISO service and gain access to professional cybersecurity advisory and CISO services to suit your budget.  Bringing our Virtual CISO advisors on board is more cost effective than hiring your own full time staff or hiring consultants from the BIG 5 consultancies. 

Professional advice on prioritising technology investments

Our aim is to save our clients' money and we achieve this by offering pragmatic and practical advice. Our Virtual CISO Consulting Services often helps reduce overall investments in unnecessary technology stacks.  

Increased engagement with your Board, Senior Executives & Management

 True cyber-resiliency starts from the top. We speak the language of business to engage all executives. Our vCISOs are specialists in engaging and presenting to a range of senior executives, board members & non-technical senior staff. With our Virtual CISO Advisory services you can be assured of greater board engagement.

Our Vision & Mission Behind the vCISO Service 

CM-Alliance’s primary objective with the Virtual CISO Advisory Services is to make our clients fully cyber-resilient. With our cyber risk management services, we aim to enable them to protect their businesses against known threats. We also aim to assist them in rapidly detecting, responding to and recovering from advanced cyber-attacks so they can conduct their business uninterrupted.

How do we achieve this mission??

We do this by Identifying organisational risks and threats; creating, improving and assisting to deploy technology controls, processes and policies to Protect the organisation from cyber-attacks and helping make the organisation beach-ready so it can rapidly Detect, Respond to and Recover from a cyber-attack.

Our Standards-Based Approach:

At Cyber Management Alliance, we take co-ownership of your challenges and risks and aim to improve your organisation’s Cybersecurity and Cyber resilience posture through our professional services and experienced staff.

100 %

Flexibility

90 %

Average cost savings. No, really!

100 %

Savings on training & termination costs.

0 %

Headache & Wait time. 

Virtual CISO Services

The 15 Service Domains of our Virtual CISO Consulting Services?

We cover 15 main service domains in our Virtual CISO UK programme. There are several sub-categories under each domain. Get in touch with us for a more detailed understanding of the 250 service categories our Virtual CISO advisors can help you with. 

Cybersecurity Certifications

Certifications
Data Security

Data Security
Box Shield

Supply Chain Security
Global Network

Governance & Compliance
Scales

Risk Assessment & Management
Growth

Asset Management
Warning Checklistsvg

Incident Response & Crisis Management
Eye

Cyber Resilience & Strategy
Process

Technology Stack
Monitor

Operational Security
Checklist

Audits & Assessments
Hands

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
Cloud

Cloud Security
Warning-1

Cyber Risk Management & Advisory
Cyber Strategy

Cyber Strategy
We've helped 750 businesses across all sectors.

Activities & Tasks Undertaken by Our vCISOs

For our Virtual CISO Consulting Services, we have divided client requirements into three clearly defined tasks or activities:

• Review + Comment: We will review your artefacts (cybersecurity documents, policies etc.) & provide our professional opinions.
• Review + Refresh: We will review existing artefacts, understand your processes & where required refresh the documents to align with best practices.
• Create: We will understand the organisational context, the business processes and create relevant artefacts based on best practices and applicability to the organisation.

 

Trusted by top businesses and government bodies across the globe

6 Reasons Why Our Clients Opt for our vCISO Service

There is a reason clients in UK, Oman, Singapore, Scotland, Dubai, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, US and elsewhere trust Cyber Management Alliance. 

We set the highest bar for cost effective, top quality vCISO services. 

Get in touch if you want us to create, review or refresh your policies, processes and procedures or if you want to ensure you comply with ISO 27001:2022 or Cyber Essentials or NIST's Cybersecurity Framework.  

Download vCISO Brochure

Trusted & Impartial

We offer trusted impartial guidance, advice and professional support from globally-recognised experienced professionals.

Long-term Partner

Organisations are in long-term partnerships with Cyber Management Alliance Ltd and treat us an extension of their business.

Strong People Skills

Humans are complex beings and we fully understand and respect office politics and human dynamics and navigate these effortlessly. 

Vendor-neutral Context & Guidance

Although we know the cybersecurity market really well, our vCISO service does not sell any products or solutions. We don't endorse any vendor or brand. 

Top-notch Cyber Professionals

We offer you access to a world class 'CISO as a service' (Virtual CISO Advisory Services), underpinned by our carefully-recruited cybersecurity consultants.

Top Quality at Great Value

The USP of our vCISO service is its cost-effectiveness. We are able to compete with global providers whilst maintaining 100% of our recognised quality service. 

Our vCISO Services can support you in over 100 different ways!

More reasons to hire our vCISOs...

There are literally over a hundred reasons why most organisations should hire our vCISOs. 

You must be wondering, why bother with a hiring an external consultant (we prefer to use the word vCISO or virtual Cyber Information Security Officer)  for your business. Surely, you can hire a full time staff or do it yourself? So, here's a quick snapshot of the key reasons why our clients hire our vCISOs: 

  • Access to a pool of experienced CISOs (you're lucky if you can get even one good full time CISO).
  • Our CISOs know how to engage all kinds of stakeholders.
  • Our CISOs have the battles-scars and hit the ground running almost immediately.
  • Our vCISOs have exceptional leadership and skills to help define, plan and execute bespoke strategies unique to your organisation.
  • Our vCISOs are supported by a whole backend team of consultants, risk, compliance and governance teams to ensure we meet all the varying requirements of your business.

You can download our special vCISO v Full Time CISO PDF here.

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Trusted_Advisory_VCISO_Services

Client Feedback

Listen to what our clients have to say about our vCISO service

"In order for BMJ to the right way forward we looked for a VCISO to advise us on the right way to do things and give us expertise. We went to Cyber Management Alliance and it's been about a year now and we ran workshops, looked at our response to incidents, created the incident response plan and we are in a position now where we understand our way forward. Our VCISO keeps us on our toes and overall it's been a very effective way of delivering expertise into the organisation that we wouldn't have normally had."

Aaron Townsend, Service Delivery Manager, British Medical Journal  

 

CMA-vCISO-5-pillars
Built on International Standards

5 Pillars of our vCISO Services

Our vCISO service is based on five key pillars - Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond & Recover 

The table on the left summarises each category. 

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MORE INFO

The VCISO Process Workflow

As soon as a client signs us on, we conduct a NIST-Based Cyber Health Check & overall Assessment of artefacts before agreeing on the next set of important activities and selecting one or more service domains. The workflow includes the following:

  • A review of the artefacts & agreeing on the scope.
  • An assessment of the artefacts & staff interviews.
  • A management report detailing recommendations and areas of improvement.
VCISO and TA Workflow

What does a virtual CISO do?

A small snapshot of the Virtual CISO Job Description & the V CISO roles and responsibilities...

Complete Assistance on Artefacts

Our expert vCISOs will help you review, refresh & create cybersecurity artefacts including policies & processes. They will also help you align the organisation & related artefacts against a selected standard.

Guidance on Data-Breach Readiness

Our vCISOs oversee and co-ordinate to ensure your business is prepared to deal with data breaches and cyber incidents. They can also assess your breach readiness and advise you on effective strategies for cyber incident response. In a nutshell, they will catalyze your organisation's internal capability in Cybersecurity, Cyber Resilience & Incident Response. 

Regulatory Compliance and Governance

Our vCISOs will help you prepare for specific audits and assessments. They will also get you certification-ready in ISO 27001:2022, BCP 22301, UK’s Cyber Essentials, PCI-DSS and others. Apart from this, they will manage and communicate with regulators for all data privacy and information security requests on your behalf. 

 

Why not book a discovery call to discuss your requirements?

Want more information on what is a Virtual CISO, Virtual CISO Services & Virtual CISO hourly rates? Book a no-obligation discovery call with one of our consultants. 

BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL

Let us show you why our clients trust us and love working with us.

All trademarks, service marks, trade names, product names, service names and logos appearing on the site, or on printed or digital material are the property of their respective owners, including in Cyber Management Alliance Ltd. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved.
SERVICE DOMAINS

What exactly do you get with our Virtual CISO Consulting Services?

Here's a quick look at 10 of the main service domains that we cover in our Virtual CISO UK programme. There are several sub-categories under each domain, some of which have been listed below. 

Cybersecurity & Cyber Resilience

1. Cybersecurity Strategy
2. Cybersecurity Policy & Procedures
3. Cybersecurity Roles & Responsibilities 
4. Crisis Management Procedures 
5. Disaster Recover & Business Continuity Plans

Incident Response & Incident Management

1. Incident Response Plan
2. Policies, Plans & Procedures
3. Playbooks
4. Threat Actor Library
5. Mapping of incidents/Security events

 

Risk Assessment & Risk Management

1. Risk assessment
2. Risk mitigation plan/Risk prioritization
3. Audit/Assessment reports
4. Incident tracker & Change management tracker - Major Changes
5. Information asset registers

 

 

Supply Chain

1. Agreements with Suppliers
2. Requirements in Supply chain
3. Evaluation of cybersecurity controls in supply chain
4. Policies & Procedures
5. Evaluation & Monitoring checklists

Certifications

1. Gap assessment
2. Measurement effectiveness of controls
3. Previous audit report closures
4. Implementation of controls
5. ISO 27001 & Cyber Essentials

Governance & Compliance

1. Policies & Procedures
2. Measurement effectiveness
3. Compliance to organisational framework
4. Audit plans & Assessment reports
5. Information security strategy

Technology Deployment

1. Architecture diagram
2. Comparison of solutions
3. Configuration
4. Monitoring

Data Security

1. Information classification
2. Data flow analysis
3. Information access controls/restrictions
4. Data leakage controls

Operations Security

1. Policies
2. IT Procedures
3. Configuration guidelines
4. Incident/Problem Management
5. Effectiveness of IT Security controls

Asset Management

1. Asset Management
2. Information asset registers
3. Information classification and labelling
4. Asset criticality
5. Asset handling procedures

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What is a Virtual CISO (vCISO)?

    A Virtual CISO (vCISO) is an outsourced cybersecurity leader who provides strategic guidance, risk management, governance, compliance support and cybersecurity expertise without the cost of hiring a full-time Chief Information Security Officer.

  • What is the difference between a vCISO and a full-time CISO?

    A full-time CISO is a permanent, in-house executive with a corresponding salary and overheads, whereas a Virtual CISO gives you access to experienced, cross-industry cybersecurity leadership on a flexible, as-needed basis. A vCISO delivers the same strategic guidance, governance and risk expertise at a fraction of the cost, without the recruitment, training or retention challenges — especially valuable given the industry-wide shortage of skilled security leaders.

  • Why should a business hire a Virtual CISO?

    Businesses hire a Virtual CISO to gain access to experienced cybersecurity leadership, improve cyber resilience, manage risks, support compliance initiatives and strengthen incident response capabilities at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CISO.

  • How much does a Virtual CISO cost?

    A Virtual CISO is significantly more cost-effective than employing a full-time CISO — Cyber Management Alliance reports average cost savings of around 90%, with no recruitment, training or termination costs. The service is flexible and scaled to your budget and needs, so you pay for the expertise you require rather than a full-time salary. For a tailored quote, book a discovery call or download the vCISO brochure.

  • What services are included in Virtual CISO Consulting?

    Virtual CISO services typically include cybersecurity strategy development, risk assessments, governance and compliance support, incident response planning, business continuity guidance, security policy creation, third-party risk management and executive cybersecurity reporting.

  • How does the Virtual CISO service work?

    Cyber Management Alliance’s vCISO programme covers 15 main service domains and around 250 service categories — spanning governance and compliance, risk assessment, incident response and crisis management, cloud security, supply chain security, business continuity, cyber strategy and more. Work is delivered in three clear ways: Review + Comment (we review your documents and give professional opinions), Review + Refresh (we update existing artefacts to align with best practice), and Create (we build new policies, processes and artefacts tailored to your organisation).

  • Which standards and frameworks does the vCISO service support?

    Our Virtual CISO advisors can help you create, review or refresh the policies, processes and procedures needed to align with recognised standards and frameworks, including ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. The service follows the NIST approach of Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover to build genuine cyber resilience.

  • Is the Virtual CISO service vendor-neutral?

    Yes. The Virtual CISO service is completely vendor-neutral — we do not sell any products or solutions and do not endorse any vendor or brand. This means you receive trusted, impartial advice focused solely on what is right for your organisation, and our guidance often helps reduce unnecessary spend on technology you don’t need.

  • Who can benefit from Virtual CISO services?

    Virtual CISO services are ideal for start-ups, SMEs, growing businesses and enterprises that require expert cybersecurity leadership but do not have the budget, need or resources to employ a full-time CISO.

  • What is the difference between the vCISO, Virtual Cyber Consultant and Virtual Cyber Assistant services?

    All three are subscription-style cybersecurity services suited to different needs. The Virtual CISO (vCISO) provides senior, strategic security leadership — governance, risk and CISO-level decision-making. The Virtual Cyber Consultant (VCC) is a flexible, full-service remote consultancy for medium and large enterprises with ongoing requirements. The Virtual Cyber Assistant (VCA) is an affordable, subscription-based service for small and medium businesses needing day-to-day support. A discovery call can help identify the right fit.

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