Virtual CISO (vCISO) Services
Security leadership on a monthly retainer. One named person who owns your security decisions, answers your customers' questionnaires, and keeps cloud cost and cloud risk on the same review cadence, without a full-time CISO salary.
The Problem
Your first enterprise customer sent a security questionnaire and nobody owns the answer. An investor asked where you are on SOC 2. The cloud bill keeps climbing and no one can say which lines are waste and which are risk. The work is real, it is recurring, and it is not yet a full-time job, so it lands on whichever engineer is least busy and gets done late.
Who This Is For
Early-stage startups, funded or bootstrapped, at roughly 5 to 50 engineers, that need someone accountable for security decisions but cannot justify a full-time hire. Teams facing a first enterprise security review, a SOC 2, ISO 27001 or India DPDP readiness push, or an RBI or SEBI obligation. Delivered remotely, so location is not a constraint.
Who Should Own Cloud Infrastructure and Security at a 10-Person Startup?
One named person, not a committee and not whichever engineer is free that week. At ten engineers the work, cloud posture, IAM, incident response, vendor security questionnaires, is real and recurring but it is not yet a full day's job, so a founder-led team either lets it drift between engineers and it gets done late, or takes on a fractional owner who reviews cloud and cost together on a monthly cadence. A full-time CISO hire rarely makes sense this early: the workload does not fill a role, and the search itself takes months you do not have when a customer questionnaire or investor diligence request is already sitting in the inbox. A vCISO retainer gives you that named owner from week one, without a full-time CISO salary, and it scales down as easily as up if the need changes. The signal to move to a full-time hire is when the work stops being episodic: several reviews running in parallel, a dedicated incident rotation, or a team large enough that coordination alone is a job.
Typical Outcomes
Timeline Options
First 30 Days
- Cloud, identity and pipeline posture review
- Security questionnaire evidence pack assembled
- Risk register and a stage-appropriate roadmap
- Top critical fixes implemented, not just listed
Ongoing Retainer
- Everything in the first 30 days, maintained
- Named owner for inbound security questionnaires and vendor reviews
- Monthly posture and cost review with a written decision log
- Policy set maintained as the team and the stack change
- Incident response plan kept current and rehearsed
Audit-Ready Track (90 days)
- Everything in the ongoing retainer
- Control gaps mapped to your chosen framework
- Evidence collection automated where it is worth automating
- Auditor selection support and scoping help
- Readiness walkthrough before the audit window opens
This might not be a fit if...
- You need a signed SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certificate. That comes from a licensed audit firm. I prepare you for the audit rather than issue the report.
- You want a name on a website and no real involvement
- You need a full-time, on-site security leader starting today
What You Get
The Transformation
Before
- Security questionnaires sit for weeks while the team guesses at answers
- Nobody owns the call on what risk is acceptable at this stage
- Compliance work starts after a deal is already blocked on it
- Cost and risk are reviewed by different people, at different times, or not at all
- Policies exist as documents nobody reads
After
- One named owner for security, reachable in your Slack
- Questionnaires answered from evidence that is already maintained
- A roadmap that says what happens this quarter, and why that order
- Cost and risk reviewed together, once a month, in writing
- Policies short enough that following them is the easy path
Engagement Models
Project-based
Fixed scope, fixed timeline, fixed price. Ideal for specific security initiatives.
Retainer
Ongoing support with priority response. Perfect for continuous security needs.
What influences pricing?
- Team size and environment complexity
- Timeline and urgency requirements
- Scope of systems and platforms
- Ongoing support and maintenance needs
Frequently Asked Questions
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AWS Baseline (India)
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Chennai
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, run from Chennai. Lower cloud bills, infrastructure that holds up, and security that stands up to scrutiny, for a fraction of what one senior hire costs. Remote-first, IST working hours, in-person in Chennai when it genuinely helps.
UAE
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for startups in the UAE. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate hires or an advisory firm that writes recommendations someone else has to implement. Includes the security leadership work: enterprise questionnaires answered, and clarity on which data protection regime each of your entities actually falls under.
US
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for US startups. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate six-figure hires or an advisory firm that writes recommendations someone else has to implement. Includes the security leadership work: SOC 2 readiness built into how the infrastructure runs, and enterprise security questionnaires answered with evidence.
UK
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for UK startups. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate hires in one of Europe's most expensive engineering markets. Includes the security leadership work: Cyber Essentials readiness, UK GDPR technical measures, and enterprise security questionnaires answered with evidence.
Singapore
Your cloud, infrastructure and security team on a monthly retainer, for Singapore startups. One senior engineer who owns the cloud bill, the deployment pipeline and the security posture together, rather than three separate hires or an advisory firm that writes recommendations someone else has to implement. Includes the security leadership work: PDPA technical measures, MAS TRM alignment where your buyers require it, and enterprise questionnaires answered with evidence.
India
One senior owner for cloud, infrastructure and security across your Indian startup, on a monthly retainer in rupees. Built around what Indian teams actually get asked for: DPDP obligations, RBI overlays for fintech, and SOC 2 or ISO 27001 readiness priced for Indian engineering economics rather than Western defaults.
Bangalore
Cloud, infrastructure and security owned by one senior practitioner, on a monthly retainer, for Bangalore startups competing against the most expensive DevOps hiring market in India. The retainer covers the virtual CISO (vCISO) function too: one named person accountable for security decisions and for answering enterprise questionnaires. Remote-first on IST hours, with the fintech and SaaS compliance surface Bangalore teams actually run into.
DaaS
Fixed-scope, fixed-price DevOps and security engagements you can start this week: cloud cost investigation, security audit, incident-readiness sprint, compliance gap scan. The quote is agreed before work starts, and every engagement ends with findings your team keeps. Start on demand, scale to fractional if you want it owned monthly.
Terraform
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Migration
Startup-sized cloud migrations that arrive secure and cost-controlled: PaaS to cloud (Heroku class exits), cloud to cloud, region moves for data-localization, and account consolidation. Fixed scope, fixed price, senior engineer end to end. The migration is the cheapest moment you will ever have to fix cost and security; we use it.
AI Search Visibility
When your buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity who to hire, the answer should include you. A fixed-scope sprint that measures where you stand in AI answers today and builds the technical layer that gets you cited: generative engine optimization (GEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), done with receipts. We ran this exact playbook on matrixgard.com and the results are public. A growth-side offering from the same practice; the security retainer remains the core.
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