A senior security engineer in the US costs $180,000-$250,000 in salary, plus benefits, plus tools, plus training. That is $220,000-$320,000 in fully-loaded cost. And one engineer is not a security team. You need at least two for coverage, which puts you at $440,000-$640,000/year.
An outsourced security program costs $3,000-$15,000/month ($36,000-$180,000/year). The math seems obvious. But it is not that simple.
What outsourced security actually includes
A good outsourced security provider gives you a fractional security team. Depending on the engagement, that typically includes:
- A virtual CISO who sets security strategy and handles compliance
- Vulnerability management: regular scanning, prioritization, and remediation guidance
- Security monitoring: log analysis, alert triage, incident detection
- Compliance management: SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA preparation and maintenance
- Security architecture review for major features and infrastructure changes
- Incident response planning and support
- Security awareness training for your team
What you typically do not get: hands-on engineering. An outsourced security team will tell you what to fix and how to fix it, but your engineers do the actual implementation.
What in-house security gives you
An in-house security engineer is embedded in your development process. They can review pull requests, build security tooling into your CI/CD pipeline, implement security controls directly, and respond to incidents in real-time. They understand your codebase intimately. They build relationships with your engineering team that make security collaboration natural rather than adversarial.
The response time difference is significant. An outsourced team might take 4-24 hours to respond to a security question. An in-house engineer can answer it in minutes. During an active incident, that speed difference matters.
The real comparison
Here is how the two options compare across the dimensions that matter:
Cost: Outsourced wins by 60-80%. An in-house team of two costs $500K+/year. A solid outsourced program costs $60K-$180K/year.
Response time: In-house wins. Same-day vs next-day for non-urgent issues. Minutes vs hours during incidents.
Depth of knowledge: In-house wins. They know your codebase, your architecture, and your threat model intimately.
Breadth of experience: Outsourced wins. They work with dozens of companies and have seen more attack patterns, more compliance scenarios, and more architecture variations.
Availability: Outsourced wins for 24/7 coverage. Two in-house engineers cannot provide around-the-clock monitoring. An outsourced SOC can.
Scalability: Outsourced wins. Need more capacity for a SOC 2 push or a security incident? They can ramp up. Scaling an in-house team means months of recruiting.
The recommendation by stage
Pre-seed to seed (1-20 employees): Outsourced. You do not have the budget or the workload to justify a full-time security hire. An outsourced engagement at $3,000-$8,000/month covers your needs.
Series A (20-50 employees): Outsourced plus one in-house security champion. Identify a senior engineer who is interested in security and give them 20% of their time to work on security projects. The outsourced team provides strategy and expertise. The in-house champion does implementation.
Series B+ (50+ employees): Start building an in-house team and use outsourced services for specialized capabilities you cannot staff internally (24/7 monitoring, compliance management, penetration testing).
Need help with your security strategy?
traztech provides outsourced security programs tailored to startups. From virtual CISO services to SOC 2 compliance, we give you enterprise-grade security at startup-friendly pricing.
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