A vCISO for AI is a retained, senior security leader who owns your AI program's risk posture on a fraction of a full-time hire. They keep one current AI risk register, read NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act against your actual systems, and report to your board and your insurer on request. Pricing starts at $6k/mo, fixed and scoped, with a documented runbook if you ever end the engagement.
You are shipping LLMs and agents faster than your security team can keep up. You do not have a CISO, let alone one fluent in AI risk. A virtual CISO for AI gives you that leadership on a fraction of a hire. This person owns the AI risk posture and runs the governance cadence. They answer your board and your auditor when they ask whether the AI you shipped is under control. From $6k/mo, fixed scope, with a runbook on exit.
An AI-program vCISO is not a generalist security contractor with "AI" added to the title. It is retained leadership for one place: where model risk, data governance, and information security stop being separate problems and become one job. Your engineers can ship an LLM feature in a sprint. What they cannot do is decide how it is governed. They cannot decide what evidence an auditor needs, or who signs off that the risk is acceptable. That decision needs a senior owner with the fluency to make it correctly.
Concretely, an AI-program vCISO interprets the frameworks so your team does not have to. They translate the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (Govern, Map, Measure, Manage) into controls your engineers can actually implement. They read ISO/IEC 42001 and the EU AI Act for what those demand of your specific systems. They keep one current view of risk as the technology and the regulations move underneath you. Interpretation is the work. The standards are public. Knowing which clause binds which system, and what "good enough" looks like for a company your size, is what you are retaining.
The fit is a mid-market company, roughly 50 to 500 people, deploying LLMs or agents in production with no CISO, or a CISO without AI-specific depth. You feel it as a set of questions nobody owns. Which AI systems are we actually running? Who decided that one was acceptable? What do we tell the auditor or the insurer when they ask? Millions of cybersecurity roles sit unfilled, and most organizations report a moderate-to-critical skills gap. Hiring a full-time AI-fluent CISO is slow and expensive, even when the talent exists. A fraction of that hire buys the senior cover an AI program actually needs.
It is the wrong call in two cases. If you have no AI in production yet, you want a one-time governance readiness read, not a retainer. If you already have a capable CISO who just needs a scoped AI assessment, you do not need ongoing leadership. We will tell you which of those you are on the first call. The retainer is for companies whose AI risk is now continuous enough to need a continuous owner.
The retainer is scoped, fixed-fee, and renewable. It is not an open-ended hourly arrangement. A typical engagement starts at $6k/mo. It covers the standing work of owning an AI program's risk posture. Scope scales with the number of AI systems and the regulatory surface you face.
This retainer owns the AI-specific risk surface. If you need program-wide leadership across identity, vulnerability management, incident planning, vendor risk, backups, and compliance readiness, start at our core cybersecurity hub. Atlanta-area small businesses can also use the local fractional CISO route.
It is worth being precise about what a vCISO for AI is not, because the title gets stretched. It is not a full-time employee you are renting by another name. There is no seat to backfill and no benefits to carry. The engagement is built to leave you with a documented program, not a dependency. It is not a 24/7 security operations center. We provide advisory leadership and governance. Where you need continuous monitoring or managed detection and response, a vetted partner delivers that. We help you scope and orchestrate the requirement.
It is also not certification, and not legal advice. We get your AI program ready and keep the evidence trail current. The certificate, where one exists, comes from an accredited body. The legal interpretation of the EU AI Act and your contracts stays with your counsel. What you are buying is a senior owner for the AI-risk surface that currently has none. That person is accountable for the posture, fluent in the frameworks, and present enough to answer the board, the auditor, and the insurer. That accountability, on a fraction of a hire, is the entire value of the model.
A retained vCISO for AI starts at $6k/mo, scoped and fixed-fee rather than billed hourly. The figure scales with how many AI systems you run and how much regulatory surface you face — a single EU-facing product is a different scope than a dozen internal tools. We size it on the first call so you approve a number, not an open-ended meter.
A governance consultant delivers a project — an inventory, a gap assessment, a roadmap — and leaves. A vCISO owns the program over time: the same risk posture, kept current as your systems and the regulations change, with standing board and insurer reporting and a senior owner for exceptions and incidents. Consulting is a deliverable; a vCISO is accountability.
No. We provide readiness and risk leadership, not certification. We are not an accredited certification body, and we don't issue ISO/IEC 42001 certificates or certify EU AI Act or NIST AI RMF compliance — only accredited bodies do that. We keep you ready and assemble the evidence; the certificate, where one exists, comes from the accredited body.
No. We work alongside your counsel. Interpreting the frameworks and maintaining the control program is an engineering and governance exercise; your attorneys own the legal interpretation of the EU AI Act, enforcement risk, and your contractual obligations.
It augments, it doesn't replace. Where you have a CISO or security lead, the AI vCISO owns the AI-specific risk surface they don't have the bandwidth or the framework depth to cover, and reports into your existing structure. Where you have neither, we provide the senior security leadership for the AI program directly.
You keep everything: the AI risk register, the policies, the evidence trail, and a runbook documenting how the program runs. The engagement is designed to leave you operable on exit — high-value advisory with a runbook, not a dependency you can't unwind. And to be clear, a vCISO is advisory leadership, not a 24/7 SOC; continuous monitoring, where you need it, is delivered by a vetted partner you contract.
If you are shipping AI faster than anyone is governing it, that gap is a board-level risk waiting to be asked about. A vCISO for AI closes it deliberately. They own the posture, the evidence, and the reporting, so you can keep moving without flying blind. Bring us your AI program and the questions you cannot yet answer. We will scope a retainer that fits it.
Download the CISO annual report and board certification template — required attestation language and supporting evidence structure for NY-licensed entities under 23 NYCRR Part 500.17.