Security needs an owner. The full-time hire is nine months out.

A Fractional CISO is a named senior partner in the role, in the room with the board, the auditor, and the customer, with decision rights on risk, controls, and the security investment plan. Not a consultant on retainer. Not a marketplace platform. The seat.

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Why This Matters

Security without an executive owner is a series of unanswered questions. By the time the right person is hired, the questions are findings.

Security decisions accumulate. Risk acceptances, control trade-offs, vendor approvals, customer attestations, board commitments, regulator responses, every one of these is a decision that needs an executive owner. When the seat is empty, the decisions get deferred, escalated to the wrong forum, or made informally by people who don't have the authority to make them. That's where the findings come from.

Hiring a full-time CISO is the right answer eventually. Today, it's not the answer for the next nine months. Fractional CISO is the owner in the seat now, a senior partner with industry depth and the standing to chair the board conversation, sign the customer attestation, sit across from the auditor, and lead the program until the full-time hire is ready to take it.

55%

of senior security hires take six months or longer to close. The seat sits open while the search runs, and the board's questions don't wait.

IANS Research / Artico Search

By The Numbers

$415k

average total compensation for a CISO at a mid-market company under $1B in revenue, before recruiting fees, equity, benefits, or the cost of a vacant seat during the search.

IANS Research / Artico Search · 2025 Small & Middle Market Benchmark

76%

of general counsels say the CISO is very critical to a major transaction. The seat being filled, with real decision authority, is now a deal-level variable.

FTI Consulting · CISO Redefined

Three situations where the seat needs to be filled now.

Who This Is For

Situation 1

Customer, board, or investor wants a named CISO

An enterprise customer requires a named security executive on the contract. The board wants someone they can call. An investor's diligence flagged the gap. The deal, the round, or the relationship is conditional on the seat being filled.

Situation 2

Just had an incident or an audit failure

Something broke. A breach, a finding, a regulator inquiry. The org needs an executive who can answer 'what changes now' with authority, run the remediation, and represent the response externally.

Situation 3

Outgrew the IT director running security on the side

Security started as part of IT. It scaled past where a sub-executive can credibly own it, but the path to a full-time CISO hire isn't ready, or isn't the right next move.

Best Outcome

A named senior partner the board, customer, and investor can engage with, backed by the program, the cadence, and the evidence behind them.

Best Outcome

Decisions made and signed at the right level, with a roadmap that survives the post-incident scrutiny and the next regulatory or audit cycle.

Best Outcome

Executive-level program ownership in seat. The current owner gets a seat at the table they can keep, or a runway to grow into the role.

Seven things a CISO is on the hook for that can't be delegated.

"Security leadership" is a phrase, not an engagement. The actual work is a set of named accountabilities that have to live with an executive. These are the seven that, in most mid-market organizations, fall to the Fractional CISO and stay there.

How It Works

Domain 1

Risk Acceptance

Named decisions on which risks the organization lives with, on paper, with rationale ready for the auditor and the board.

Domain 2

Program Roadmap

Where the security investment goes, in what order, against what business outcome, on what cadence. A 12-month plan, reviewed quarterly.

Domain 3

Board Reporting

Quarterly board reports written in fiduciary language. Risk posture, regulatory horizon, control coverage, incident trends, translated for the audience that signs off on it.

Domain 4

Audit & Regulator

The chair across from the auditor and the regulator. Walkthroughs, exception responses, certifications, signed by a senior name with the authority to defend them.

Domain 5

Customer Security Review

Senior signatory on customer security questionnaires, BAAs, master agreements. The named executive enterprise customers expect to engage with.

Domain 6

Incident Leadership

The executive in the war room when the org is under attack. Containment decisions, customer and regulator communication, post-incident accountability.

Domain 7

Cross-Functional Alignment

Engineering, Legal, Finance, Risk, Privacy, security only works as a cross-functional outcome. The CISO is the chair of that forum.

Dedicated executive leadership for your security program.

What's Included

After this engagement, you will have:

A named senior partner in the seat

One person, matched to your industry, your framework, and your stage. Not a pool, not a platform, not a rotation. The name on the contract is the name in the room.

After this engagement, you will have:

Quarterly board and executive reporting

A standing report written for the board, risk posture, program progress, regulatory horizon, incident trends, with the underlying evidence ready when asked.

After this engagement, you will have:

Audit and regulator engagement

Walkthroughs, evidence reviews, certifications, and exception responses chaired by your Fractional CISO. The auditor talks to one person, with one voice.

After this engagement, you will have:

Customer security representation

Senior signatory on questionnaires, BAAs, and master agreements. Customer security reviews led by the executive the customer was asking for.

After this engagement, you will have:

A 12-month security roadmap, on a quarterly cadence

Where the investment goes, what closes, what waits, what gets watched. Reviewed every quarter against the running program and the regulatory horizon.

After this engagement, you will have:

Risk register ownership

The risk register is your CISO's. Decisions are dated, signed, and traceable, so when something happens, the response isn't reconstructed, it's documented.

After this engagement, you will have:

A path off Fractional when you're ready

When a full-time hire is the right next move, we run the search support, the onboarding plan, and the handoff, so the org you hand to them is set up for them to succeed.

How a Fortellar Fractional CISO is different from the alternatives in the market.

The category is crowded and the offerings look the same on the surface. The differences are real, and they show up the moment the work gets serious, an incident, an audit, a customer escalation, a board meeting.

What This Isn't

A full-time hire

A full-time hire is the right end-state for many organizations. A Fractional is the right answer for the nine months while you find one, and often for years longer at organizations where the workload doesn't yet justify a senior full-time salary.

A virtual CISO platform

Productized "vCISO" services pool consultants and rotate them. Ours doesn't. You get one named partner, with continuity across boards, audits, and incidents, because that continuity is where the value compounds.

Promoting from within

Promoting your strongest security director can be the right move, eventually. A Fractional gives that person a senior partner to learn under, while the org gets the executive presence today. Many of our engagements end with the internal hand-off we helped prepare.

Doing without

The most common alternative, and the most expensive one. The cost of an empty seat shows up later, as findings, lost deals, deferred remediation, and the executive bandwidth your CTO or CFO spent answering questions that weren't theirs.

A consulting engagement

A consultant delivers findings and leaves. A Fractional CISO holds the seat, signs the attestation, takes the call from the regulator, chairs the GRC forum, owns the risk register, and is accountable for the decisions made under their name.

An MSSP relationship

An MSSP runs operational security, monitoring, detection, response. They do not own the program. The Fractional CISO sits above the MSSP and across the executive team, and is often the one who chose, briefs, and holds the MSSP accountable.

Four phases. Scoped to the org and the seat, not to a standard engagement length.

How It Works

Phase 1

Match

We pair you with the right senior partner based on your industry, your audit framework, your stage, and the specific shape of the seat you need filled. The match is named before the engagement starts, not assigned out of a pool after.

Phase 2

Stand up

First 60 days. The Fractional CISO reads the program, names the open decisions, builds the cadence, and stands up the forums that don't exist. By day 60, the role is live, the board, the auditor, the customer, and the org all know who to call.

Phase 3

Operate

The running engagement. Quarterly board reports, audit and regulator engagement, customer security reviews, incident leadership, program oversight. Decisions made and dated under the CISO's name.

Phase 3

Hand off

When a full-time hire is the right next move, we run the search support, the onboarding plan, and the executive transition. The Fractional steps back as the full-time CISO steps in, to an organization set up for them to succeed.

You Walk Away With:

A named senior partner, with their background and depth on paper.
A defined scope of the seat, committees chaired, signatures held, decisions owned.

You Walk Away With:

A current-state read of the program, on paper, signed.
A 12-month roadmap with a quarterly cadence.
GRC forum running with a charter and a member list.

You Walk Away With:

Quarterly board reports on file.
Customer-facing representation on the contracts and BAAs that need it.
A running risk register, owned by the CISO.

You Walk Away With:

A search-support package: job spec, scorecard, candidate diligence.
An onboarding plan for the incoming CISO, with the program briefed.
A clean handoff, no reconstruction, no gaps.

Differentiator: XXXX

A governance framework grounded in regulated-industry research — not a consulting template.

Our framework is built from active research with clinicians, compliance officers, and AI practitioners in the industries that can't afford to get it wrong — health systems, financial services, insurance. It's anchored to NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001, and it's the same framework we operate behind every Fortellar Secure AI engagement.

Operating Posture

76%

Engineer-led coverage

76%

Engineer-led coverage

76%

Engineer-led coverage

76%

Engineer-led coverage

XXXXX

Expertise This Work Draws On

The components behind a Fractional CISO engagement.

Cybersecurity & Compliance

Security Program Leadership

Executive-level ownership of the security program: roadmap, investment, governance, and the cross-functional forum where security decisions actually get made.

Cybersecurity & Compliance

GRC Governance Design

Standing up and chairing the GRC forum and the working groups underneath it, the structure that lets risk decisions get made at the right level, by the right people.

Cybersecurity & Compliance

Compliance Framework Alignment

Working knowledge of SOC 2, HITRUST, HIPAA, PCI, NYDFS, ISO 27001, and the state and sectoral rules that reach mid-market organizations, applied to your specific environment.

Cybersecurity & Compliance

Board & Executive Communication

Translating risk and compliance into the fiduciary language the board, the audit committee, and the investor signs off on. Written reports, in-person presentations, and the document trail that comes with them.

See Expertise

Secure AI
Activation

Need the inventory and governance baseline first? Start here before handing agents to a managed service.

Where clients go after migration.

AI Agent
Build

Need agents built before they can be managed? We design and build them to the same ops discipline that will run them.

Security Operations & Monitoring

Your SOC already covers the estate. Managed Agent Services extends that into the AI layer without a parallel team.

Where To Next

Learn More

A nine-month executive search is not a remediation plan.

Thirty minutes with a senior partner. Bring the seat you need filled, board-facing, audit-facing, customer-facing, or all three, and we'll name the partner who matches it.

Talk to us