As a service provider — MSP, MSSP, or consultant — you likely offer cybersecurity advice and possibly vCISO services to your clients. Scaling your vCISO services can increase your revenue, upselling opportunities, and profit margins.
Scaling is not without its difficulties. Nevertheless, with the right tools, scaling is simple and seamless, and your vCISO services will flourish.
The CISO and vCISO.
CISOs are one of the most sought-after positions in business, but medium-sized and small-to-medium sized enterprises are in dire need of the same level of expertise to protect themselves.
As a consequence of this rise in demand, CISO salaries are growing. This has created a market opportunity for service providers like MSPs, MSSPs, and consultants to offer virtual CISO services to their clients.
Offering clients a full vCISO function requires a high level of expertise, particularly in the security field; evaluating the client’s environment thoroughly and analysing any gaps; completing a full risk assessment and developing a strategy to address these gaps; and addressing compliance and regulatory issues, to name a few. This is only a fraction of what a genuine vCISO should provide.
This company has high profit margins and a strong point of differentiation, but it also presents a number of challenges.
Increasing the scale of vCISO services
An efficient vCISO service can offer exceptional potential, such as new revenue streams, an essential upselling feature, the retention of existing clients, and a fantastic go-to-market strategy for attracting new business.
Scalability is the greatest barrier: having one or two clients is one thing, but expanding beyond that in a sustainable manner is an entirely different matter. We will investigate the primary barriers to scaling vCISO services, as well as solutions for overcoming them.
CISO duties are labour intensive
Similarly to the previous point, conducting CISO responsibilities as a vCISO is time-consuming. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done, and with new regulations and threats continually emerging, a virtual chief information security officer’s work is never complete.
Scalable expertise is necessary
Numerous service providers rely on a single security expert or a small team with C-level expertise to fulfil their vCISO responsibilities. These requirements cannot be delegated as they evolve. Overworked key personnel negatively impact retention, employee engagement, and client service. Rapid expansion with existing personnel or by recruiting new specialists is unsustainable.
Security professionals must carry out additional responsibilities.
Your security personnel are probably already extremely busy. It is impractical to merely assign them to the new vCISO practise and remove them from their current projects and clients.
Risk assessments take time
The primary responsibility of a CISO or vCISO is to conduct risk assessments. Monitoring, documenting, and conducting analyses are examples. These evaluations alone occupy a significant amount of a security professional’s time.
Risk evaluations precede strategy
To make scalability even more challenging, the policies and remediation that must be implemented can only be implemented precisely after a lengthy risk assessment has been completed.
How to scale the vCISO service efficiently
How can you effectively scale your vCISO offering given these obstacles? Automated software is indispensable to success.
It is virtually impossible to manually scale a vCISO business due to the enormous volume of data that must be processed for each client.
Using automated, purpose-built software, on the other hand, enables the seamless scaling of a vCISO practise, thanks to all the available modern resources, such as cloud computing and advanced AI.
Complex algorithms employ the best practises of CISOs from around the globe to perceive each business individually, perform automated risk assessments, and ensure that a plan is generated that addresses all gaps and regulatory requirements.
Due to automation and AI, software platforms can generate customised policies and remediation plans.
The majority of issues that arise when scaling a vCISO business are addressed by AI-powered, automated software.
CISO responsibilities are labor-intensive. With an automated platform, the software manages numerous labor-intensive responsibilities, freeing up key personnel and delivering a consistent and compliant experience.
Scalable expertise is necessary: An automated, AI-driven platform enables service providers to offer all of the CISO expertise in the world, and from a scalability perspective, this can be provided to all of the clients they could potentially acquire.
Now, security specialists can concentrate on high-impact activities, such as time spent with clients, rather than time-consuming manual and repetitive tasks.
With artificial intelligence and automation, risk assessments can be completed in a fraction of the time required by a human. Generally, this can be reduced from days to 2-4 hours.
This is no longer a barrier to scalability due to the speed with which risk assessments are performed and the auto-generation of policies and remediation plans.
Begin scaling your vCISO services immediately
With the proper vCISO platform, you can scale vCISO services without delay. You can differentiate yourself from the competition, enjoy substantial margins, demonstrate your value to current and prospective consumers, and add a reliable new revenue source.
Register to begin selling with DataguardNXT. Contact our specialists for a demonstration and enhance your business.