Frequently asked questions

A Virtual CISO owns your security strategy and runs it: board reporting in plain English, a prioritised risk roadmap, compliance leadership across ISO 27001, SOC 2 and Cyber Essentials, incident readiness, and expert answers whenever your team needs them.

Read the full role explained →

If you handle customer data, work in a regulated sector, depend heavily on IT or SaaS, or keep getting security questionnaires from bigger customers, then yes, you will feel the benefit quickly. A vCISO gives you senior direction and someone accountable for security without a six-figure hire.

The most common triggers we see: security decisions piling up with nobody owning them, customers asking for ISO 27001 or SOC 2 evidence, a near miss with phishing or ransomware, rapid scaling into the cloud, or investors doing due diligence.

Yes. You are assigned a named vCISO who learns your business, your technology and your people, and stays with you. Behind them sits the wider CyPro team, so you also get specialist depth (penetration testers, architects, incident responders) that no single hire could cover.

Of course. Most clients see their vCISO on site around one day a month, typically for board sessions or chairing the security committee, with the rest delivered remotely. If you want more physical presence, we simply shape the engagement around that.

Yes. The service is UK-wide and remote-first, with on-site days wherever you are based. CyPro is headquartered in Canary Wharf, and our vCISOs work with clients across the whole of the UK.

Typically £2,500 to £5,000 per month, set by your organisation's size, complexity and the coverage you want. That is a fraction of the £255,000 a year a full-time CISO really costs once benefits and overheads are counted.

See the full pricing breakdown →

UK law does not yet explicitly require one. In practice, meeting obligations under the Data Protection Act and UK GDPR without senior security ownership is hard, and regulators notice. Organisations that can show credible security leadership tend to be treated far more sympathetically by the ICO after a breach than those that cannot.

For most buyers, yes: both mean senior security leadership delivered part time. Historically a Fractional CISO was more embedded, working set days each month, while a Virtual CISO leaned remote and on demand. We deliver both shapes of engagement.

See our Fractional CISO service →

A CISO is a permanent in-house executive who owns security strategy and runs the programme day to day. A vCISO delivers the same senior leadership as a flexible external service, part time or on demand, which makes it dramatically more affordable and quicker to put in place.

Compare vCISO vs full-time CISO in full →

Wherever your senior accountability sits: usually the CEO, COO or the board directly, with a working relationship into IT. Your vCISO chairs the security committee and reports risk in business language, so decisions get made at the right level.

Our vCISOs are senior CyPro practitioners holding CISSP, CISM, CRISC, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor and related credentials, with previous CISO and security leadership roles in major UK organisations.

Meet the partners behind the service →

This service is run by CyPro, a UK cyber security consultancy specialising in small and medium sized businesses and high-growth companies. That focus matters: you get pragmatic security leadership shaped for businesses your size, backed by a full consultancy team, not a lone contractor or a generalist IT provider.

Immediately, in most cases. There is no three to six month recruitment cycle: after a discovery call we can usually have your vCISO engaged within days, with the first priority being a rapid view of your current risk so improvement starts in weeks, not quarters.