The Rise of CISO Service at Integris and What It Could Mean to Your Business

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In 2022, Integris is investing big in cybersecurity.

In fact, we’re expanding our team of highly trained virtual CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers). With the extra capacity, we’re offering our CISO experts as a service line for all our locations. This is a huge moment for us as a company, and we hope, for our clients, too.

If you’re not already familiar, CISOs are some of the most high-powered experts in the IT industry. They’re CIO-level leaders who come armed with CISSP certifications, at a minimum. Because of this, CISOs are a rare breed that are hard to recruit. Many people have asked me why we’d go the expense of creating this new division. After all,  the vast majority of MSPs haven’t made a similar investment.

I always give them the same answer. What’s important to our clients is important to us. That’s why we’re taking the cybersecurity services we already offer through our VCIOs, and upgrading them with the addition of a separate and independent vCISO function. It will offer you higher level strategic leadership around cybersecurity, allowing you to go deeper with policy, compliance, and the predictive upgrading of your security as your network grows. I believe as many as fifty to seventy percent of our clients could benefit from a vCISO.

How do I know this? Here’s a statistic that really brought that point home to me. In the Gartner 2022 IT Trends report, they predicted that by 2026, at least 50 percent of C-Level executives will have cybersecurity performance requirements built into their employment contracts. So, it’s no mystery, then, why our newly launched CISO service has doubled in revenue in a single quarter.

Why CISO Services Are in High Demand

With levels of cybercrime exploding at historic levels, cybersecurity has turned into the number one issue in most IT departments. A vCISO can manage your cybersecurity from the top down—from planning to implementation, from monitoring to documentation. By offering it at the MSP level, we’re able to take a fairly unattainable resource for many companies and make it scalable. Affordable, too.

It all comes down to one thing, really. A vCISO takes the very complex, technical job of cybersecurity and compliance, and makes it easy for your company to manage. That’s what we’re trying to build here at Integris. A service that keeps you one step ahead of your cybersecurity threats and regulatory burdens, so you can focus on your other business priorities.

But I’d also encourage you to think of what a CISO can do for you more broadly. After all, it’s easy to think of a CISO as the guy who installs your cybersecurity tools and monitors your firewall.

What a CISO Can Do For You

But did you know a CISO can also:

  • Create detailed assessments and a gap analysis on where your defenses fall short
  • Put together integration plans to seed cybersecurity into everything you do
  • Write your policies for bring your own device, and mobile usage
  • Manage your regulatory reporting around cybersecurity
  • Create reports for potential customers who want to see that you’ve got certain cybersecurity protections in place before they’ll do business with you
  • Help you stay ahead of the security requirements your cyber risk insurance provider will require
  • Set up a complete disaster recovery program for your business—and help you get up and running in minutes when the worst happens
  • Pull the reports you need in the event of a breach for regulators, and to make a claim to your cyber risk insurers
  • Train your employees in how to avoid hackers and scammers

Good CISOs will not just keep you safe. They’ll help you understand your data patterns, so you know when and how to take action on incoming threats.

In today’s complex security landscape, can your business afford to do any less?

Want to Know More?

If you’d like to know more about our CISO program, check out our new service page, or better yet, some of the recent blogs and podcasts from Nicholas McCourt, who heads up our CISO operation. There’s a lot to know!

Mike Fowler was Chief Operating Officer at Integris until 2023. In this role, he brought over twenty years of experience in the IT and MSP industry, including the operations of a national brand.

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