Security Engineer or vCISO? Your First Hire, by Stage
A security engineer builds; a vCISO decides. Which one your startup needs first, stage by stage — and the cases where the answer isn't a vCISO at all.
We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Attempting to reconnect
Writing · Tag
4 posts on vCISO. Or browse the full writing index →
A security engineer builds; a vCISO decides. Which one your startup needs first, stage by stage — and the cases where the answer isn't a vCISO at all.
Most founders who book the intro call have already read three or four of my posts and arrive at the same question: "Okay, but what would the next 90 days actually look like if I hired you?" Here's the answer — week by week, with the real numbers.
A full-time CISO costs $200–400K plus equity. A vCISO costs $2–4K a month and gives you 80% of the value at 5% of the burn — until you outgrow them. The math, the deliverables to expect, and the red flags that mean you've hired the wrong one.
A fractional engineering engagement starts with a codebase you've never seen. You have ninety minutes to form a useful POV before the kickoff call. The seven-step triage I run, the two questions I bring back to the founder, and how AI tooling has accelerated the process.