Virtual CISO services, without the full-time hire

A vCISO holds the senior security leadership role in your business on a retainer instead of a salary. That means setting the security strategy, choosing which frameworks you work to, writing the business and security requirements, reporting risk to the board in language it can act on, and leading the response when something goes wrong.

The vCISO decides what good looks like. The managed IT provider builds and runs it. On our engagements Aegis Cybersecurity holds the vCISO role independently and Real Bytes executes against the requirements they set, so the team being assessed is not the team doing the assessing.

A full-time CISO in Australia typically costs $300,000 to $450,000 or more a year once salary, on-costs and recruitment are counted. A vCISO retainer is a fraction of that and is scoped on your size, the frameworks you are held to and the reporting cadence your board needs. We quote it in writing before work starts.

Usually when security has become a board-level or customer-level issue but a full-time hire cannot be justified yet. Common triggers are a lost or at-risk deal over a security questionnaire, a cyber insurance renewal that is being questioned, an ISO/IEC 27001 or SMB1001 requirement from a customer, a merger or investment process, or a recent incident.

Yes. The vCISO scopes the information security management system, sets the risk methodology, builds the Statement of Applicability and runs the internal audit programme, then works alongside your accredited certification body through Stage 1 and Stage 2. A realistic path for a prepared mid-market business is six to twelve months.

Yes. Insurers price on demonstrable maturity, so the programme produces the evidence they ask for: multi-factor authentication coverage, endpoint detection and response, tested backups, patching cadence, privileged access controls and a documented incident response plan. The vCISO also handles the questionnaire and the broker conversation.

The board or the executive team, not the IT function. That reporting line is the point of the role. Monthly working sessions run with leadership and IT, and a written report goes to the board each quarter covering risk posture, programme progress, incidents and any emerging threats relevant to the business.

The vCISO leads the executive side of the response: briefing the leadership team, coordinating with your insurer and external counsel, and handling notification obligations to the OAIC under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme and reports to the ACSC where they apply. Real Bytes runs the technical containment and recovery work alongside that.