The problem
Security landed on the CTO because nobody else would take it. Every customer questionnaire, every board slide, every auditor email now goes to the person who is supposed to be shipping product. Hiring a full-time CISO to answer questionnaires is not a defensible spend, and the deal that is stuck cannot wait for a search process.
The method.
Baseline against a named framework
Two-week assessment of the current state against ISO 27001:2022 Annex A and the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria. Control-by-control scoring (implemented / partial / absent / not applicable), each rating tied to an artifact or an interview, not to an opinion. Output is a gap register, not a maturity radar chart.
Set the security roadmap against business events
Sequence the gaps against the things that actually move: the enterprise deal in procurement, the audit window, the funding round, the regulatory deadline. Each item gets an owner inside your company, an effort estimate in engineering days, and the specific control it closes.
Run the operating cadence
Weekly working session with the engineering owner, monthly security steering with the exec team, quarterly management review that produces the minutes ISO 27001 Clause 9.3 requires. Risk register, incident log, exception register and supplier list are maintained in-cycle, not reconstructed before an audit.
Own the customer-facing security surface
We answer inbound security questionnaires (CAIQ, SIG Lite, bespoke enterprise spreadsheets), sit on customer security calls, negotiate DPAs and security addenda, and maintain the reusable answer library so the tenth questionnaire takes hours instead of weeks.
Carry the audit
Evidence collection, auditor liaison, Stage 1 and Stage 2 readiness, nonconformity remediation, and the corrective-action records that follow. Your engineers are pulled in for hours, not weeks.
Hand over or hold
The program is documented so it survives us: runbooks, control owners, evidence sources. When you hire a permanent CISO, they inherit an operating system, not a folder of PDFs.
What is CISO as a Service?
CISO as a Service is a fractional security leadership engagement: an experienced security executive takes ownership of your security and compliance program on a fixed monthly basis, typically 1-4 days per month. They run the risk register, own the certification effort, answer customer security questionnaires, and report to your board, without the cost of a full-time hire.
When does a company need a CISO as a Service instead of a full-time CISO?
Companies between roughly 50 and 500 employees usually cannot justify a full-time CISO but can no longer leave security with the CTO. If security work is blocking sales, if you are pursuing ISO 27001 or SOC 2 for the first time, or if a single person is fielding every customer questionnaire on top of their real job, a fractional CISO covers the need at a fraction of the cost.
Does a fractional CISO handle audits and customer questionnaires directly?
Yes. In this engagement the fractional CISO is the named point of contact for external auditors and for your customers' security teams. They prepare the evidence, sit the audit interviews, complete inbound security questionnaires such as CAIQ and SIG Lite, and negotiate the security terms in your customer contracts.