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AxonaiAssurance & Integration

Leadership, not headcount

Virtual CISO (vCISO) & Compliance Program Management

CMMC assumes someone in your company owns security. Not the office manager who inherited the passwords, and not your MSP's ticket queue, but an actual accountable person who sets policy, manages risk, and can answer for the program. Most small contractors cannot justify a full-time CISO. This is how you get one anyway.
  • Named senior security leader accountable for your program
  • Risk register, policy governance, and exception management
  • Prime and customer security questionnaires handled
  • Board and leadership reporting in plain English
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Security leader presenting a compliance program review to company leadership

What your vCISO owns

The role is not advisory theater. Your vCISO runs the security program: maintains the risk register, owns the policy set and its review cycle, approves or rejects exceptions, chairs the compliance cadence, and reports to leadership on where the program stands and what it needs.

They are also the person who translates. Leadership needs to hear risk in business terms. Engineers need requirements in technical terms. Assessors need evidence in their terms. Someone has to speak all three, and that is usually what is missing.

  • Security policy authorship, approval, and annual review cycle
  • Risk assessments and a maintained risk register with treatment decisions
  • Compliance calendar: affirmations, reviews, training, testing, and assessments
  • Vendor and supply-chain risk management, including your own flow-downs
  • Incident response oversight and post-incident review
  • Leadership and board reporting

Answering the questionnaires that decide contracts

Primes are pushing security requirements down their supply chain aggressively, and the questionnaires are getting longer and more technical. A weak or slow response can cost you a teaming agreement before anyone talks about price.

Your vCISO handles those responses accurately, consistently, and quickly, and keeps a library of answers and evidence so the fifth questionnaire takes an hour instead of a week.

Keeping compliance alive between assessments

Certification is a point in time. The obligation is continuous: annual affirmations, annual training, periodic testing, log review, access reviews, plan updates, and re-certification on a three-year cycle. Programs that go dormant after the certificate arrives fail the next one expensively.

We run a standing compliance cadence so the work is spread across the year and the evidence never goes stale. When re-assessment arrives, it is a review rather than a rebuild.

  • Quarterly control reviews with evidence refresh
  • Annual policy review, risk assessment, and IR tabletop
  • Access reviews and privileged account recertification
  • Change advisory input so new projects do not break controls
  • Annual affirmation preparation and submission support

What you get

Concrete deliverables, not a slide deck

Every engagement produces artefacts you own, that live in your environment, and that an assessor can read.

  • 01

    Named vCISO and engagement charter

    A specific senior person, a defined scope of authority, and a set meeting cadence.

  • 02

    Security policy library

    Authored, approved, versioned, and reviewed on a documented schedule.

  • 03

    Risk register and treatment plan

    Identified risks with owners, ratings, decisions, and review dates.

  • 04

    Compliance calendar

    Every recurring obligation scheduled, assigned, and tracked to completion.

  • 05

    Questionnaire response library

    Reusable, accurate answers and evidence for prime and customer security reviews.

  • 06

    Leadership reporting pack

    A quarterly report your executives can actually use to make decisions.

Straight answers

Virtual CISO (vCISO): questions we get asked

Ask us something else

How much of a vCISO's time do we get?

It scales with your program. Companies in active remediation before an assessment need substantially more engagement than companies in steady-state maintenance. We set a defined monthly commitment and adjust it as your program matures rather than billing you by the hour for every conversation.

Can a vCISO be our Affirming Official?

No. The annual CMMC affirmation must come from a senior official of your company who is accountable for compliance. Your vCISO prepares the evidence, validates the position, and briefs that official so they are affirming something they actually understand, but the affirmation is yours to make.

Do we need this if you already run our IT and security?

Not always, and we will tell you when it is unnecessary. Smaller programs are often well served by the governance built into our compliance service. The vCISO role earns its keep when there is real complexity: multiple contracts, multiple frameworks, an active supply chain, or a growing organization.

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Next step

Ready to talk about virtual ciso (vciso)?

Tell us your size, your contracts, and where you are today. We will tell you what it takes and roughly what it costs, usually on the first call.

Request your free gap checkEmail contact@axonai.us

We reply within one business day.