With COVID-19 lasting longer than expected, organizations are rapidly undergoing digital transformation. This rapid digitization of key business operations and an increased remote workforce has introduced new cybersecurity risks and widened corporate attack surfaces. As such, having a VCISO is critical to ensuring that remote business operations are in-line with cybersecurity compliance requirements evolving digital landscape.

COVID-19 ushered-in the need for business duality: the availability of both virtual and on-premise business offerings. As such, organizations have had to learn to adapt and innovate processes to be able to meet the growing demand of customer and employee needs. However, as the Work-From-Home concept becomes more of the norm than the expected, small to midsize businesses (SMBs) have found it challenging to adapt to this shifting cybersecurity landscape associated with virtualized environments.

As such, the number of unsecured virtual desktop machines increased by over 40% in the first quarter of 2020 alone. This lack of proper cybersecurity management has resulted in failed regulatory compliance requirements; mishandled cybersecurity best practices; and increased exposure of critical business assets to malicious actors more than ever before.

For SMBs, the right solution is to leverage the expertise of a Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (VCISO) into the IT security workflow of daily business processes.

The Effects of a VCISO on an SMB’s Bottom Line

Security breaches at an organizational level are bound to compromise both corporate and personal data. This duality of compromise oftentimes result in serious security incidents, which have been proven detrimental to an organization’s bottom line – small to midsize business with limited resources almost never recover.

As an SMB with limited resources, VCISO helps an organization to avoid blindspots by engineering custom strategies, policies, and procedures around critical situations that could otherwise impact business continuity. During this process, the VCISO can help to formulate cybersecurity strategies using their security knowledge, leadership capabilities, and project management expertise. This helps enterprises to optimize their cybersecurity program according to its unique computing environment needs and within specific budgets and constraints.

Top 5 Benefits of a VCISO

A VCISO provides external expertise that can be leveraged on-demand to find solutions to evolving security challenges. When hired, VCISOs ultimate goal becomes safeguarding an organization’s reputation with a comprehensive security strategy; and a unique planning and execution framework to reduce overall security risks.

Here are some benefits of having a VCISO onboard:

1. Cost-effectiveness – Hiring a full-time CISO entails paying high salaries and benefits. SMBs might not have the financial capability required to find and recruit a full-time CISO with the precise expertise necessary to challenge current and future security incidents. However, VCISO can perform the same duties at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CISO and more freedom to utilize external resources to meet security objectives.
2. Core Competency and Expertise – A VCISO is an experienced professional with strong foundational knowledge that helps in making sound decisions concerning the security of a business, including computer incident response, disaster recovery, cyber-threat intelligence, and business continuity strategies. While you might need to train a full-time CISO to pick up all the skills your business needs, a VCISO comes with ready-to-use expertise topped with considerable experience in various fields. Such advantages help SMBs to significantly reduce startup time.
3. Reduced Business Risk – A VCISO would work on a ‘as-needed’ basis. The job of the VCISO ends when your project is completed. Therefore, this kind of flexibility ensures that only necessary projects are handled and access to critical assets only occur on a ‘need to know’ basis – this helps to reduce business risks.
4. Enhancements to In-house IT Team – As your in-house IT team collaborates with a competent VCISO, a value chain is being formed thereby introducing a well-needed structure that helps to highlight areas of improvements while also enhancing strengths of the team. Besides, a VCISO frees-up the in-house IT team’s workload, thereby enabling the SMB to implement residual resources elsewhere.
5. Objective Independence – A VCISO is an external entity, who is not 100% part-and-parcel of an organization. Therefore, they are not professionally bogged down with the usual office politics. Although VCISOs evaluate your business’ security from a third-person viewpoint, they are equipped with an unbiased view of your organization’s security posture.

GoldSky’s CSOaaS Program at a Glance

GoldSky Security has launched a new comprehensive Virtual Chief Security Officer (VCISO) program, that focuses on offering ‘Chief Security Officer as a Service’ (CSOaaS) package for small to midsize businesses. The seasoned cybersecurity executives at Goldsky blend both modern and traditional tactics to deliver the following benefits in the new CSOaaS program:

• The CSOaaS program focuses on the comprehensive enhancement of security training and awareness for key stakeholders and third-party vendors.
• The program aligns cybersecurity objectives with business goals and priorities, using emerging technologies to ensure uniformity and scalability of effort.
• The program offers ȧ la-carte services, which allow SMBs to fine-tune VCISO services according to their need. The magnitude of this current service can be increased (e.g., festive season) or decreased (e.g., less business turnover, decrease in business transactions, etc.).

In Closing

It is a known fact that SMBs usually operate with limited resources, including less budget and less human expertise. Hence, it is often difficult for most SMB enterprises to have a full-time CISO. However, VCISOs are poised to perform the cybersecurity tasks at a fraction of the cost and the same degree of professionalism.

As such, GoldSky Security’s CSOaaS program endeavors to redefine the cybersecurity roadmap for SMBs by closing the gap between resource availability and security solutions. This program most importantly allows SMBs to save on costs, enhance IT resources, and add value to the organizational bottom line.