AI vCISO Services
Regulation Should Never Be A Surprise
An AI vCISO is a senior CISO delivered as a service, dedicated to running your AI program, holistically. Your assigned AI vCISO role owns the operating model, policy stack, and oversee your AI risk posture. Security accountability to the organization and your board solved with expertise. Simplified with fixed scope and capped fee with no need for a full-time executive hire.
Only 18% Of Organizations Have A Council To Govern AI
Most organizations run AI in production. Fewer than a quarter have controls to enforce their own AI policies. That distance is the AI governance gap. It is what your workforce does with AI today, minus what your board can defend tomorrow. Closing it is the AI vCISO’s job.
Governance And Risk Management
A vCAIO gives you senior AI leadership without a full-time hire. They own your AI policies, risk assessments, and compliance with the EU AI Act and ISO 42001, so your board and regulators can see AI is under control.
Structured Security
A vCAIO replaces ad hoc AI fixes with a structured program: an inventory of AI use, a clear roadmap, and named owners for every control. Your AI security stays repeatable as your use of AI grows.
Oversight And Accountability
A vCAIO puts a named leader in charge of AI oversight, with human review for high-risk decisions and regular reports to the board. When someone asks why an AI acted a certain way, you have the answer.
AI Governance Looks Different In Every Industry
AI is moving faster than most enterprises can secure it, and a hospital, a bank, and a defense supplier each face different rules for it.
Our practitioners have worked inside those environments, DoD programs included, and we track AI rules like NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act, so every new AI tool or regulation fits into a program you already have
Healthcare & Life Sciences
HIPAA §164.312 audit controls apply to AI-assisted PHI. HHS is drafting AI guidance. FDA classifies models as SaMD.
HIPAA §164.312 · HHS · FDA SaMD
Financial Services & Insurance
SEC cybersecurity disclosure clock. NYDFS Part 500. NAIC AI model law adoption. FINRA notices on AI use.
SEC · NYDFS Part 500 · NAIC · FINRA
Vendors To Regulated Buyers
Your customers’ security questionnaires now ask about your AI use, your subprocessors’ AI use, and your model provenance.
QUESTIONNAIRES · SUBPROCESSORS · MODEL PROVENANCE
Builders Of Proprietary Models
Training data provenance, model cards, evaluation harnesses, and IP protection now sit inside your governance program.
TRAINING DATA · MODEL CARDS · EVAL HARNESSES · IP
Hard Questions No One Was Hired To Take On
Your CISO owns network, identity, and endpoint. Your CIO owns adoption. Your General Counsel owns disclosure. Who owns the seam where a prompt becomes an automatous decision. A vCAIO ensures AI stays in line.
ACCESS
Who In This Company Is Authorized To Use AI, And For What?
INVENTORY
Which AI Systems Are We Running, And Which Of Them Touch Regulated Data?
EVIDENCE
If A Customer Complaint Alleges AI-Driven Harm, Can We Prove Otherwise?
VENDOR
Which Of Our Vendors Is Quietly Running Our Data Through A Model We Never Approved?
INCIDENT
If An Internally Built Agent Goes Off-Script, Do We Have A Playbook That Fits Inside A 72-Hour Window?
BOARD
When The Board Asks Whether Our AI Posture Got Better Or Worse This Quarter, What Do We Say?
The AI Security Risks We Address
As novel AI threats emerge, our risk framework is built to secure your organization now and has the AI landscape changes.
SHADOW AI
Unsanctioned Tools Everywhere
Shadow AI is unsanctioned AI use by employees, without policy or logging, on regulated data.
PROMPT INJECTION
OWASP LLM Top 10
Prompt injection is a crafted input that overrides a model’s guardrails and forces disallowed behavior.
THIRD-PARTY MODELS
Vendors Running Your Data
Third-party model risk is your data being processed by AI systems your vendors ship, fine-tune, or embed.
INSIDER MISUSE
The Malicious And The Unintentional
AI insider misuse covers deliberate theft and well-meaning oversharing land in the same regulatory bucket.
A Month-By-Month Plan Your Board Can Defend
Every engagement is scoped up front and priced up front. Everything named in the scope of work is included, from a policy rewrite to a board presentation to a Friday-afternoon vendor questionnaire. No stopwatch. No surprise line items.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is An AI vCISO?
An AI vCISO is a senior CISO delivered as a service, dedicated to the AI program. The role owns the operating model, the board-ready roadmap, and the drafted policy stack. Controls map to NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001. Advisory runs on a retained cadence. No full-time executive hire required.
How Much Does An AI vCISO Cost?
PurpleSec AI vCISO engagements are fixed-scope and fixed-price. Sizing tracks AI surface area and regulatory footprint, not hours. Typical annual engagements land between $120K and $350K. The exact figure gets locked in a scoping call once the AI inventory is on the table. No hourly billing. No scope-creep invoices.
How Is An AI vCISO Different From A Traditional vCISO?
A traditional vCISO covers general-purpose cybersecurity leadership across network, identity, endpoint, and audit. An AI vCISO adds an AI-first operating model on top. That layer includes shadow-AI discovery, agent registry, model provenance, prompt-injection surface, and quarterly board reporting on AI risk. The engagement runs standalone or alongside an existing vCISO.
Do I Need Both An AI vCISO And A Chief AI Officer?
Both seats come with every PurpleSec engagement. The AI vCISO owns program cadence, policy stack, and board reporting. The Chief AI Officer owns the technical review. That covers model provenance, prompt-injection surface, agent behavior, and evaluation harnesses. Two practitioners, one operating rhythm. No junior analysts. No handoffs.
How Long Does An AI vCISO Engagement Take?
Standard engagement is twelve months on a phased roadmap. Month one delivers the AI landscape memo and the baseline against NIST AI RMF and ISO 42001. Months two through four deliver the drafted policy stack, the third-party AI vendor risk assessments, and the first board pack. The remainder is quarterly board reporting, tabletop rehearsals, and continuous posture management. Shorter and multi-year engagements are available.
What Deliverables Do I Get From An AI vCISO?
Every engagement ships the same core artifacts. The AI landscape memo inventories every model, agent, and AI-embedded SaaS tool. A scored AI risk register maps findings to the regulations that apply. A 90-day remediation roadmap assigns named owners. The drafted policy stack covers acceptable use, model approval, and the IR addendum. A quarterly board pack carries a grade and a delta. Customer AI security questionnaires get turnkey responses.
What If I Already Have A CISO?
The AI vCISO augments the sitting CISO with AI-domain expertise most security leaders don’t have in-house. The CISO keeps ownership of the overall security program. PurpleSec’s AI vCISO owns the AI governance workstream. That covers policy, agent registry, model provenance, and board reporting on AI risk. The AI vCISO reports into the CISO on the operating rhythm already in place.