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Fractional CISO

A fractional CISO is a senior security leader who works for your company part-time. They own your security programme, answer customer and auditor questions, and lead the response when something goes wrong.

What a Fractional CISO Does

Security strategy and roadmap
SOC 2 and ISO 27001 readiness
Customer security questionnaires
Security policies people follow
Risk assessments
Vendor and third-party risk
Incident response planning
Leading the response to an incident
Security awareness for staff
Board and leadership reporting on risk

Signs You Need a Fractional CISO

  • Your first enterprise customer sent a security questionnaire - Hundreds of questions, and nobody on the team can answer them with confidence.
  • A customer or investor is asking for SOC 2 - You need someone to scope it, close the gaps and get you through the audit.
  • You had a security incident, or a near miss - You need someone senior to lead the response now and stop it happening again.
  • Your cyber insurer is asking hard questions - Renewal forms ask about controls you are not sure you have.
  • Security sits with whoever has time - Your CTO or IT provider handles it alongside everything else, and nobody owns it.

How Much Does a Fractional CISO Cost?

We don't publish a fractional CISO rate range. No reliable survey of fractional CISO rates exists, and we won't invent one.

What we can show is what the full-time alternative costs. BLS has no CISO occupation, so we use the closest one, Computer and Information Systems Managers (SOC 11-3021). We use the same figure for CTOs, CIOs and chief data officers. In May 2025:

  • Median salary: $175,140 a year
  • Mean salary: $192,160 a year
  • Mean salary plus benefits: about $281,130 a year (benefits at the all-worker average, so treat it as a floor)

One day a week of that loaded cost comes to about $56,226 a year (about $4,686 a month). That is a reference point for comparing quotes, not what a fractional CISO charges: a fractional executive sets their own fee and carries their own overheads, so expect quotes to differ from it.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). Method and caveats: what fractional executives actually cost.

How to Hire a Fractional CISO

  1. Name the trigger. "Pass SOC 2 Type 1 by June" or "answer enterprise questionnaires within a week" is a brief someone can quote against.
  2. Match their background to your problem. Audit readiness, cloud security and incident response are different skills. Ask which they have done most.
  3. Ask what they would deliver in the first 30 days, and what they need from your engineers.
  4. Speak to a company they took through an audit or an incident, not only a past employer.
  5. Agree days, deliverables and who is on call if something happens outside those days.

Frequently Asked Questions

Find Your Fractional CISO

Tell us what you need in a CISO and a real person will read your brief.