Ongoing security leadership for cleared defense contractors — without the $300,000/year full-time executive.
A cleared defense contractor CISO costs $250,000–350,000 per year in salary and benefits, is virtually impossible to hire in today's labor market, and represents significant overhead for a 50-to-150 person company whose primary compliance challenges are CMMC and FOCI — not running a 24/7 SOC or managing a 500-person security organization.
What actually goes wrong without security leadership in place: no one owns the compliance calendar, so deadlines arrive as surprises. DCSA reviews catch the organization unprepared because there is no point person maintaining readiness between reviews. Vendors get approved without security evaluation because there is no process. Incidents occur without a response plan because no one ever built one. The compliance posture that looked reasonable on a self-assessment starts looking fragile the moment an external examiner arrives.
A fractional vCISO delivers what the full-time hire would deliver at the strategic and compliance level — program ownership, board reporting, regulatory interface, vendor oversight — without the cost, without the ramp-up period, and without the risk of hiring the wrong person for a role that requires specialized knowledge of the defense industrial base that most enterprise CISOs simply do not have.
Our background across FOCI, CMMC, and AI deployment means the engagement covers the full compliance landscape a defense contractor actually faces. One team. Three disciplines. No gaps in coverage when the conversation moves from CMMC scoping to FOCI annual recertification to an AI deployment decision that touches the SSP boundary.
The vCISO engagement is defined at the start of the engagement and adjusted as the organization's needs change. Core coverage areas below.
Strategic direction, program roadmap, and accountability for security outcomes. Someone owns the program — not just the tasks someone else assigned.
Executive-ready reporting on security posture, compliance status, and risk. Leadership gets clear answers to the questions they need to ask, not a technical briefing they cannot interpret.
Security assessment of proposed vendors and tools against your CMMC boundary and FOCI obligations. No vendor gets approved without a documented security review.
IRP development, tabletop exercises, and playbook maintenance. When something goes wrong, the organization has a tested plan — not a document someone printed two years ago.
Primary point of contact for DCSA FOCI engagements, C3PAO CMMC assessments, and external compliance reviews. We have been on this side of the table before.
Tracking CMMC, FOCI, and contract compliance deadlines. Annual SF 328 recertification, SPRS score updates, SSP reviews, and contract action monitoring — nothing falls off the calendar.
Security guidance for IT staff, escalation path for security questions, and a knowledgeable resource for the operational security questions that come up between scheduled advisory sessions.
Security program assessment, risk register review, compliance calendar audit, and stakeholder interviews. We map the current state of the program — what exists, what is missing, and what the immediate exposure is. Deliverable: current-state report and 90-day prioritized roadmap.
Defined monthly advisory hours, compliance monitoring, board reporting package, vendor security reviews, compliance calendar management, and incident response availability. Scope is adjusted as active compliance events — DCSA reviews, C3PAO assessments, contract modifications — require additional attention. Deliverable: monthly security posture update and rolling compliance calendar.
Quarterly program reviews, annual CMMC recertification support, annual FOCI SF 328 recertification review, and scope adjustments as the organization's contracts, systems, or ownership structure changes. Deliverable: quarterly security program review and updated risk register.
What's the difference between a vCISO and a CMMC consultant?
A CMMC consultant delivers a project: gap assessment, SSP, assessment prep, with a defined start and end date. A vCISO provides ongoing security leadership. We offer both — and the vCISO engagement typically includes CMMC compliance calendar management, SSP maintenance, and C3PAO assessment coordination as part of the retainer scope. If your organization has already completed its initial CMMC build-out and needs someone to own ongoing compliance, the vCISO model is more appropriate than another project engagement.
How many hours per month does the retainer include?
Advisory hours are defined at engagement start based on the organization's size, compliance posture, and active requirements. A typical engagement for a 50–150 person defense contractor includes 10–20 advisory hours per month, plus availability for escalations. Engagements that include active compliance events — a DCSA review, C3PAO assessment, or major contract action — can be scoped with additional hours for the duration of that event. The goal is to right-size the engagement to what the organization actually needs.
We already have an IT director. Do we still need a vCISO?
These roles are complementary, not redundant. An IT director focuses on operations and infrastructure — keeping systems running, managing vendors, maintaining the environment. A vCISO focuses on security strategy, compliance accountability, regulatory interface, and board-level risk management. Most defense contractors with an IT director and no CISO have a strategy and accountability gap — which is exactly what surfaces during a DCSA review or C3PAO assessment. The IT director will tell you what systems exist. The vCISO tells you whether the compliance program holding those systems together is sound.
Can the vCISO engagement cover FOCI compliance as well?
Yes. Our background spans FOCI, CMMC, and AI — so the vCISO engagement can include FOCI compliance monitoring, contract action reviews, annual SF 328 recertification support, and DCSA engagement interface. This is what makes the engagement particularly valuable for defense contractors facing both CMMC and FOCI obligations simultaneously. Most vCISO providers have deep security expertise. Very few have the FOCI operational background that comes from 16+ years inside a DCSA-scrutinized, FOCI-mitigated contractor.
Let's talk about what a fractional vCISO engagement looks like for your organization — size, compliance posture, active obligations, and what it would actually cost to have someone own the program.
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