How Much Does a vCISO Cost? A Quick Pricing Breakdown

Any small business with a digital presence has cybersecurity needs, but a full-time cybersecurity hire is often overkill for their requirements.

There soon comes a tipping point, though.  

For slightly larger or more digital-focused businesses, hiring a few cybersecurity ‘generalists’ may actually not be enough to cover the full spectrum of compliance and hands-on security work required. 

Two opposing scenarios, one solution: work with a virtual CISO (vCISO) to plug the gaps and take control of your security posture. 

But how much does a vCISO cost? And how can you measure their ROI?

‍

vCISO Cost: Benchmarks & Breakdowns

Yes, ‘how much does a vCISO cost?’ is one of those ‘how long is a piece of string?’ type questions. 

But we know that answer won’t fly when setting your budget, so we’ve brought together a more robust answer here.

To find these numbers, we compared the advertised vCISO prices from up to fifteen different sources for project-based pricing, monthly pricing, and hourly pricing. 

We’ve scoured Reddit threads, LinkedIn posts, marketplaces, and existing articles to work out how much vCISOs are charging in 2025. 

‍

‍

Monthly: $7,120

Monthly was the most common way for vCISOs to charge their services, and this makes a lot of sense; more experienced professionals can complete work more efficiently, meaning the hourly fee would reduce their profitability. 

Almost every source we found provided a bracket for these monthly services, or a selection of different packages, rather than one fixed price. 

The average bracket was: $2,623 - $11,618 per month.

‍

Hourly: $259 

Hourly was the second most popular way for vCISOs to charge. The average quoted rate was $259, but there were a few outliers on the upper end of this; the highest quoted rate we saw was $500/hour, and the second highest was $395/hour.

But how many hours is reasonable for a vCISO to work on your business? 

Again, it varies—but the general consensus is that vCISOs work for a minimum of 10 hours per month. It’s also usual for this to be higher for the first few months and then drop down as the volume of work lowers. 

The average bracket was: $185 - $334 per hour.

‍

Project-based: $21,100

Project-based was the least common way vCISOs billed their services. This is unsurprising given that the nature of this work is mostly ongoing, but per-project pricing is actually a more logical choice in some cases (such as preparing for an audit). 

The average bracket was: $8,200 - $34,000 per project.

‍

What will drive this cost up? 

No matter how vCISOs charge, you’ll notice there’s a broad price range. So what’s likely to drive the price higher? 

You work in a niche or highly regulated industry

If you deal with large volumes of highly sensitive data, or work within an industry that’s subject to niche or numerous regulations, you need someone with experience navigating those trickier waters, and can expect to pay more for this service. 

You’re hiring someone with more experience

Naturally, hiring a vCSIO who previously worked as a CISO for a large company will cost more than someone relatively new to the industry. 

You’re working under a compliance framework (e.g. SOC 2)

These security frameworks set higher standards for how data needs to be stored and managed, and this work therefore costs more. 

‍

Assessing the ROI of a vCISO 

Every cent matters when running your own business. So starting work with anyone new —be it full-time or fractional—always requires careful cost analysis. 

But how can you assess the Return on Investment of a vCISO? There are a few ways to frame this:

Think of your vCISO as a partner for growth

Cybersecurity can (and should) be about keeping your own data and product secure. But this doesn’t just bring peace of mind—it actually helps you land bigger customers. 

If you’re a SaaS company, for example, the right vCISO will help you get the key compliance certifications that your enterprise leads will require before working with you. 

It’s cheaper than hiring a CISO

As of December 2024, the average salary for a CISO in the USA is $338,594. Working on a fractional basis, or only for a short project, the total cost of a vCISO will be much less than this. They can also typically get up to speed and start adding real value more quickly than a CISO can. 

Can you afford not to hire one? 

The statistics vary, but it’s believed that between 43% and 70% of all attempted cyberattacks are targeted at SMEs, who may be perceived as having less robust measures in place to protect them (an assumption which, unfortunately, is often the case). 

Breaches can be costly not only from a monetary point of view, but from a reputational one, too.