A full-time CISO is the right answer at a certain scale. Below that scale, you are paying a base salary that typically starts around $300K plus equity and benefits for a role that may only need a fraction of a week. A fractional CISO gives you the leadership without the full-time burn. Here is the honest comparison.
We would rather tell you the truth than win a bad-fit client. Here is when the alternative is genuinely the better choice.
If that is you, hire full-time, and a fractional CISO can even help you scope the role and interview candidates. Most growing companies are not there yet.
| traztech | Full-time CISO | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | Roughly $3K to $8K per month | Base salary that typically starts around $300K, plus equity and benefits |
| Time to value | Engaged and working within days | Three to six months to source, interview, and onboard a senior hire |
| Who does the work | A published CVE researcher acting as your CISO | One full-time executive you have to find, afford, and retain |
| Who answers the auditor | We own the program and sit in the audit | Your CISO, once hired and ramped |
| Depth | Strategy plus hands-on execution and remediation | Depends entirely on the individual you hire |
| Scaling down | Adjust scope month to month | A full-time salary is fixed cost whether the work fills the week or not |
You get a security leader who owns the strategy, the roadmap, and the audit relationship, at roughly $3K to $8K per month instead of a $300K plus base.
Hiring a senior CISO takes months and a strong candidate may not exist in your market. We are engaged and producing within days.
A fractional CISO from traztech does not just advise. We build the policies, run the SOC 2, handle the questionnaires, and remediate findings ourselves.
Six published CVEs including a CVSS 9.1 Mirai botnet kill-switch covered by CyberInsider. Your customers and auditors get a name with provable depth behind it.
The same job as a full-time CISO, scaled to your stage: owns the security strategy and roadmap, runs SOC 2 and other compliance, answers security questionnaires, manages vendor and customer security reviews, leads incident response, and sits in the audit. The difference is you pay for the fraction you need.
Base salaries for an experienced CISO typically start around $300K and climb well past that in major markets, before equity, benefits, and recruiting fees. The total loaded cost is often far more than the base alone. A fractional engagement is a fraction of that.
Yes. What auditors and enterprise customers want is a named, accountable security owner who can answer for the program. A fractional CISO is exactly that. Our founder being a published CVE researcher with a SOC 2 Type II background tends to carry more weight than a title alone.
When the workload genuinely fills a full week, you have an internal team that needs daily management, or a board or regulator expects a full-time executive. We will tell you when you are approaching that line, and we will help you hire and transition.
Yes. A fractional CISO can set direction, run the program, and lead an existing internal team part-time. If the team is large enough to need daily, full-time management, that is the signal to hire full-time.
Incident response is part of the engagement. We lead the response, coordinate the team, and handle customer and regulatory communication. Many clients pair the fractional CISO with an incident response retainer for guaranteed response time.
Get a fractional CISO who owns the strategy and does the work, engaged within days instead of months.
Book a strategy call