CISO Advisor
Fractional CISO for growth-stage companies: threat model, SOC 2 / ISO 27001 sequencing and control mapping, IR roles, vendor risk.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
Justifying a security budget to the board requires framing security in business terms rather than technical ones. Here's how to approach it: **Focus on risk, not tools.** Boards care about business risk, not firewalls. Frame your ask around what could go wrong and what it would cost. **Tie to compliance requirements.** If you need SOC 2 or ISO 27001 to close enterprise deals, that's a revenue argument, not a cost center argument. **Benchmark against peers.** Showing that similar companies spend a comparable percentage of revenue on security helps normalize the ask. **Show what you've already accomplished.** Demonstrate ROI on previous security investments. **Present options, not ultimatums.** Give the board a tiered set of choices rather than a single number. Would you like help structuring the presentation?
BOARD MEMO — FY SECURITY BUDGET, $800K
Boards don't fund fear. They fund quantified risk and unblocked revenue.
Both are below.
QUANTIFIED RISK — top 3, annualized
Ransomware
Likelihood 8%/yr (sector base rate, our controls)
Impact $4.2M (14-day outage $2.1M + recovery $800K + notification
$600K + regulatory $700K)
Annualized loss expectancy .................... $336K
Credential compromise → data exposure
Likelihood 15%/yr · Impact $1.8M
ALE ........................................... $270K
Insider/third-party data loss
Likelihood 5%/yr · Impact $2.4M
ALE ........................................... $120K
TOTAL ANNUALIZED EXPOSURE ..................... $726K
The $800K reduces this to a modeled $310K. Net risk reduction $416K
against $800K spend — which alone does not clear the bar. The revenue
argument below is what does.
REVENUE CURRENTLY BLOCKED
$2.1M in pipeline gated on SOC 2 Type II (4 deals, security review
stalled). $340K of the ask is the audit path. That line is a revenue
unlock, not a cost.
THE ASK, IN TIERS — pick one
Tier 1 $340K SOC 2 Type II + evidence automation
Unblocks $2.1M pipeline. Risk unchanged.
Tier 2 $800K Tier 1 + IR retainer + EDR + IAM consolidation
Exposure $726K → $310K. RECOMMENDED.
Tier 3 $1.4M Tier 2 + 24/7 SOC
→ $180K. Diminishing return at our stage.
BENCHMARK
Peers at our ARR spend 6–9% of engineering budget on security.
Tier 2 puts us at 7%. Tier 1 alone leaves us at 3% — below every
comparable, and that gap is itself a diligence finding in the next
raise.
WHAT HAPPENS AT $0
SOC 2 slips 12 months, the four deals go to a competitor who has it,
and we carry $726K of annualized exposure with no IR retainer — the
single largest driver of breach cost in every published dataset.About this skill
Most startups approach security as an audit to pass. This advisor builds a program that is actually secure and also gets you through SOC 2 or ISO 27001, in the order that unblocks deals fastest.
What it does
- Builds a short threat model of the scenarios most likely to hurt a company like yours
- Sequences the program: identity and MFA, least-privilege production access, secrets, logging, backups, then the audit
- Chooses between SOC 2 and ISO 27001 based on what buyers asked for, and maps controls to criteria with [verify] tags
- Sets up incident response roles, severity levels, and first-hour checklists, with notification duties flagged for counsel
- Tiers vendors by data access and reads their reports' exceptions, not just the cover page
What you get
A short answer for quick questions, or one piece on request: threat model, roadmap, control map, IR role chart, vendor process, or board summary.
Best for
Founders, CTOs, and first security hires at 10-300 person B2B companies. To critique a single plan or launch, use CISO Plan Review.
SKILL.md preview
---
name: ciso-advisor
description: Ongoing fractional-CISO advice for a growth-stage company's security program - threat modeling what actually matters, choosing and sequencing SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or GDPR work, mapping controls to framework criteria, identity and least privilege, vendor risk, incident response roles and runbooks, security budget, and board reporting. Use when the user asks "where do we start with security?", "SOC 2 or ISO 27001 first?", "enterprise deals are stalling on security questionnaires", "who does what if we get breached?", "how do we assess vendors?", "how much should we spend on security?", or "what do I tell the board about security?".
---
# CISO Advisor
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