Virtual CISO Services in India & UAE.
An experienced CISO embedded in your leadership team on a fractional basis — 1, 2 or 4 days a week. Sets policy, owns risk register, presents to the board, manages regulators, mentors your in-house team and stays accountable to outcomes, not hours billed.
What is a vCISO?
A vCISO (virtual CISO) is an on-demand senior security leader who sets strategy, owns your risk and compliance posture, and reports to the board — without a full-time hire. Macksofy provides CISSP/CISM-certified vCISOs who satisfy the RBI and SEBI requirement for a named, independent security head.
Fractional is the day count. Not the seniority.
Every Macksofy vCISO has held an in-house CISO or Deputy CISO role at a regulated firm. You meet the named individual before you sign, and they report into your CEO or COO — not back into us.
Seed to Series-B, first enterprise deals, first certification.
- ▸Policy stack drafted and owned
- ▸Risk register established and maintained
- ▸Board or investor reporting each quarter
- ▸Certification programme steered (ISO 27001, SOC 2)
Series-C onward, a small in-house team, live audit cycles.
- ▸Everything in the 1-day plan
- ▸Monthly risk committee chaired
- ▸Security team mentoring and hiring support
- ▸Architecture review on every material change
Regulated firms, M&A diligence, cover during a CISO transition.
- ▸Everything in the 2-day plan
- ▸Regulator inspection response led end to end
- ▸Incident command with DFIR under the same contract
- ▸Structured handover to the incoming full-time CISO
Not an advisor who emails recommendations.
The difference between a consultant and a CISO is accountability that recurs. Here is what recurs.
- C-level security leadership at 25–40% of the fully-loaded in-house cost
- Board + risk-committee reporting handled by someone who has done it before
- Regulator-facing interlocutor (CERT-In · RBI · SEBI · DPDP Authority · DESC / NCA in GCC)
- Mentorship pipeline for your in-house engineers (career-ladder, training plan)
- Continuity through founder departures, fundraises and M&A diligence
- ▸Leadership stand-up, in your calendar not ours
- ▸Architecture review on every material change
- ▸Security-team 1:1s and mentoring
- ▸Vendor and third-party risk decisions
- ▸Risk-committee meeting, chaired
- ▸Risk register reviewed and signed off
- ▸KRI / KPI pack against agreed thresholds
- ▸Remediation-progress escalation where it has stalled
- ▸Board pack: trend chart, top risks, regulator status, hiring plan
- ▸Policy-stack review against what actually changed
- ▸Audit and certification readiness checkpoint
- ▸Budget re-forecast
- ▸Maturity reassessment against NIST CSF and ISO 27001
- ▸Twelve-month strategy and budget refreshed for board sign-off
- ▸Audit-readiness sign-off
- ▸Succession planning toward a full-time hire, where that is the goal
- ▸Incident Commander during High and Critical events
- ▸Breach communications and regulator notification
- ▸Macksofy DFIR forensics pulled in under the same contract
Someone who has sat in that room before.
An inspection is a bad time to learn how an inspection goes. The vCISO is your named interlocutor across the Indian and GCC regulators that apply to your licence.
Incident reporting under the 2022 directions, log retention, and an annual audit by an empanelled organisation.
Cyber-security framework compliance, System Audit reporting, and board-level oversight for regulated entities.
CSCRF alignment for market intermediaries, with periodic audit evidence and governance sign-off.
Information and cyber-security guidelines for insurers, with inspection response and observation closure.
Lawful processing, breach notification and data-principal rights handling across your systems and processors.
Dubai Cyber Security Standard alignment for entities operating in the emirate.
Essential Cybersecurity Controls compliance for in-scope organisations.
Obligations summarised at the level the published directions state them. Which apply to you depends on your licence, sector and where you operate — establishing that map is month-one work.
Baseline by month one. Board sign-off by month two.
- ▸Stakeholder interviews (board, CEO, CTO, CFO, audit, legal, ops)
- ▸Asset, vendor and regulator inventory
- ▸Current-state risk register + maturity baseline (NIST CSF · ISO 27001)
- ▸12-month security strategy + budget draft
- ▸Strategy presented to board / risk committee
- ▸Policy stack reviewed or rewritten (information security · acceptable use · incident response · vendor risk · DPDP / GDPR)
- ▸KRIs and KPIs agreed with leadership
- ▸Monthly risk-committee chair + quarterly board reporting
- ▸Regulator engagement (CERT-In · RBI · SEBI · DESC · NCA · DPDP)
- ▸Architecture review on every major change (cloud, third-party, product)
- ▸In-house team mentoring + recruitment / interview support
- ▸Incident command during High / Critical incidents
- ▸Annual maturity reassessment + strategy refresh
- ▸Annual board pack + audit readiness sign-off
- ▸Succession-planning for in-house CISO hire (if applicable)
Three shapes of the same problem.
Scope · vCISO 2 days/week for 14 months
What happened · Built security from 1-person to 4-person team; passed SOC 2 Type 2 and SEBI CSCRF; supported successful Series-D due diligence
Strategic — avoided estimated ₹2.5 Cr/yr full-time CISO cost during pre-IPO scaling phase
Scope · vCISO 4 days/week — interim coverage during in-house CISO transition
What happened · Continuity through 7-month CISO transition; chaired IRDAI inspection response; closed 14 of 17 audit observations before handover
Material — zero regulatory observation carried into the new CISO tenure
Scope · vCISO 1 day/week + 24×7 IR on-call
What happened · Built UAE PDPL + ISO 27001 program from scratch; passed ISO certification within 9 months of engagement
Strategic — unlocked GCC enterprise sales channel previously blocked on certification gap
When you hire a full-time CISO, that is the win.
Several of our vCISO engagements end in a recruited in-house CISO, and the outgoing vCISO runs that search. A provider whose incentive is to stay forever is the wrong provider for this role.
Scoped to the organisation you have become during the engagement, not a template pulled off a job board.
Screens the shortlist on technical and board-facing capability, and advises on the package the market actually clears at.
Risk register, regulator relationships, open audit observations and the board narrative all transfer deliberately.
Your tools where you have them. Ours where you do not.
Risk treatment is tracked in the tracker your engineers already use. Where you already license a compliance-automation platform, the vCISO operates inside it rather than beside it.
Senior CISO leadership, priced for your stage.
vCISO retainers run ₹4–18 L per month depending on day-count, seniority and regulatory footprint. 12-month minimum. Tell us where you are in your security journey and we’ll send a scoped proposal within 48 hours.
What the engagement covers
- 12-month security strategy + budget signed off by board
- Policy stack (10–14 core policies) — drafted or refreshed
- Monthly risk-committee meetings chaired
- Quarterly board pack (trend chart, top risks, regulator status, hiring plan)
- Regulator interlocutor for CERT-In · RBI · SEBI · DPDP · DESC · NCA
- Incident command during High / Critical events
- Mentorship + interview support for in-house security hires
- Annual maturity reassessment (NIST CSF + ISO 27001)
Sectors we operate in
Empanelled by CERT-In. Accredited by EC-Council.
“We've worked with three Big 4 firms before Macksofy. None found what their team did in our payments stack. The most actionable report we've received in a decade.”
“The CHFI training Macksofy delivered for our cyber cell raised investigation quality measurably. Practical, India-context-aware, and respectful of our operational realities.”
“Came in with zero security background. 5 weeks later I was running Burp Suite and Metasploit confidently. Cleared CEH on the first attempt.”
What boards ask before approving this.
Where Macksofy delivers vCISO.
On-site engagements across India's BFSI, fintech, government and SaaS metros plus the UAE. Senior consultants fly from Mumbai BKC for kickoff, key reviews and exit briefings; remote weeks run through the rest of the engagement.
Macksofy delivers this work to the following standards and regulator requirements. Definitions and controls are sourced from the issuing bodies below.
Get a fixed-price proposal in 48 hours.
Tell us about your security need — pentest, audit, training or a wider engagement. A senior consultant will reply within a few business hours.
- CERT-In Empanelled
- EC-Council ATC · CompTIA Authorized
- Thousands of professionals trained
- India + UAE engagements