Paid engagements

Three services.
Operators on your team.

Once discovery is done, paid work follows what we found. Most SMBs start with us operationalizing the cloud security platform they just bought and closing the SOC 2 or ISO 27001 evidence gap. Scaling teams take the same engine into FedRAMP 20x. AI security and governance is a dedicated practice — see the section below. Every engagement is scoped, deliverable-driven, and priced on enquiry.

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⚙️
CNAPP Operationalization & Workflow Build
Follows discovery · scoped to environment

You bought the cloud security platform. We make it do what the sales deck promised. We stand it up, tune the noise out, close the findings that are actually exploitable, and wire the alerts into the channels engineering already lives in. Day-one red dashboard, day-thirty working program.

  • Stand up the platform you boughtCNAPP/CSPM configured, scoped, and tuned — not left in default-policy purgatory
  • Close the findings backlogWe work the queue with engineering — fix, suppress with justification, or ship a guardrail so it never comes back
  • Wire it into how you shipTriage, ticketing, CI/CD, and on-call paths — security shows up in the tools engineers already use
  • Audit evidence captured as a byproduct — not a Q4 scramble
  • Stack rationalization — kill the overlapping tools you stopped opening
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🏛
Compliance Readiness
Phased engagement · SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / FedRAMP 20x

Compliance is the deal blocker — SOC 2 and ISO 27001 for the SMB enterprise contract, FedRAMP 20x for the public-sector deal. We've built these programs from the inside, including first-generation FedRAMP 20x with machine-readable controls and continuous validation. We know what auditors actually accept, not just what the documentation says.

  • SOC 2 & ISO 27001 readinessGap close-out, policies that match how you actually operate, and evidence pulled straight from your CNAPP and cloud accounts
  • Auditor & 3PAO liaisonWe sit in the audit calls — translate between auditors, engineering, and agency sponsors so you ship answers, not delays
  • FedRAMP 20x compliance readinessMachine-readable controls, automated evidence pipelines, and continuous validation infrastructure
  • SSP, POA&M, and artifact library development
  • C-SCRM and software supply chain security controls
Why FedRAMP 20x matters now FedRAMP 20x shifts authorization from point-in-time assessments to continuous validation. Organizations that build for 20x from the start avoid costly rework. We can help you architect for both simultaneously.
03 / 03 Limited availability
Fractional CISO
Following completed engagement · select clients only

Embedded practitioner, not advisory — a fractional CISO who stays on the keyboard. For SMBs that need security ownership without a full-time hire, and scaling teams bridging to their first security exec. Available exclusively to clients who have completed an engagement with CyberMuse — so the relationship, environment, and trust are already in place before the retainer begins.

  • Monthly strategy sessions with IT/OT and leadership teams
  • Quarterly board-ready risk and posture review
  • Security program oversight — priorities, KPIs, vendor governance
  • Incident response — hands on the keyboard during active events
  • Compliance posture tracking and audit readiness
  • Policy, procurement, and third-party risk review
Why we structure it this way A fractional CISO relationship only works when there's already mutual understanding of your environment, your team, and your risk profile. We build that in every initial engagement.
How every engagement begins

Start with a complimentary
scoped discovery.

Before any paid work begins, we run a complimentary first engagement — hands-on time inside your environment that surfaces real risks and gives us both a clear picture of what happens next. No obligation. No pitch until the findings speak for themselves.

ENTRY POINT 01 Complimentary
🔍
Cloud Security Posture Discovery
Scoped discovery · complimentary first engagement

A hands-on walkthrough of your cloud security posture — identity risks, configuration exposures, network and trust-boundary gaps, and AI pipeline vulnerabilities. We map what we find, prioritize by actual exploitability, and present findings clearly. What happens next is your call.

  • Cloud configuration and IAM review
  • Network boundary and segmentation analysis
  • Identity risk and privilege escalation paths
  • Prioritized findings with business impact context
  • Live debrief with your team — no report drop-and-run
ENTRY POINT 02 Complimentary
🧠
AI Security Posture Discovery
Scoped discovery · complimentary first engagement

A hands-on walkthrough of your AI adoption posture — agent inventory, governance gaps, data pipeline exposure, and oversight maturity. We map what you have, where the real exposure is, and what good would look like.

  • AI and agent system inventory and risk classification
  • Governance and oversight framework gap analysis
  • Data pipeline and model supply chain exposure review
  • AI readiness score across 5 dimensions
  • Live debrief with findings and the next moves we'd ship
Want a quick self-assessment first? Take our free AI Maturity tool →

Complimentary discoveries are scoped with you before we begin — we define the boundary together so both sides know what's covered.

Dedicated practice

AI security & governance.
Ship agents without shipping the risk.

For teams shipping AI into production — agents, MCP servers, RAG pipelines, model supply chain. We secure what your AI stack actually does in production, and stand up the governance evidence your customers — and soon your auditors — will ask for.

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🤖
Agentic & Runtime AI Security
Engagement · agents, MCP, model supply chain

Secure what your AI stack actually does in production. We threat-model the agent loop, lock down the MCP surface, and close the prompt-injection, over-permissioned-tool, and data-exfiltration paths before they ship.

  • Agentic & MCP security reviewThreat model the agent loop, tool permissions, and MCP server surface — not just the model
  • Model supply chain controlsProvenance, integrity, and access across model weights, fine-tuning data, vector stores, and inference endpoints
  • Guardrail engineering — input/output filtering, tool allow-lists, evaluator pipelines
  • Red-team and adversarial evaluation of the agent, model, and tool surface
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📜
AI Governance Program Build
Engagement · governance program build

Stand up the governance evidence your enterprise customers — and soon your auditors — will ask for. Inventory, risk classification, policy, oversight, and reporting — built to map cleanly onto whichever AI framework your buyers eventually ask for.

  • AI & agent inventory + risk classificationDiscover what’s shipping, classify by risk, and assign ownership
  • Policy, oversight, and lifecycle controlsRisk-tiered guardrails, human review gates, and lifecycle accountability across AI systems
  • Framework-ready evidenceStructured so it maps cleanly onto formal AI assurance frameworks as your customers and auditors start asking for them
  • Board- and customer-ready AI risk reporting
Talk to us about AI security →
How we think about it

AI governance, kept boringly clear.

Before frameworks, before audits, AI governance is a small set of principles, a few real owners, and a review rhythm people actually keep. We start there. Specifics map onto whatever framework your customers or auditors eventually ask for.

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Principles
The non-negotiables we build every program on
  • Know what's runningEvery AI system, agent, and vendor tool inventoried and classified by risk before it goes near production.
  • Humans stay accountableDecisions that affect customers, money, or safety have a named human owner — not a model and not a committee.
  • Tier oversight to riskLow-risk experiments move fast. High-risk systems get review gates, evaluation, and rollback paths proportional to blast radius.
  • Evidence as you goDecisions, approvals, and changes are logged when they happen — not reconstructed the week before an audit.
  • Frameworks last, not firstWe build on durable controls, then map onto whichever AI assurance framework your buyers ask for.
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👥
Roles
Who owns what — at the size you actually are
  • Executive sponsorOwns the risk appetite, signs off on high-risk deployments, and answers to the board. Usually a founder, CEO, or COO at SMB scale.
  • AI governance leadRuns the program day-to-day — inventory, policy, reviews, reporting. Often a fractional role early on; CyberMuse can hold this seat.
  • System ownerNamed human for each AI system or agent. Accountable for its scope, controls, and lifecycle decisions.
  • Security & engineeringImplement guardrails, monitoring, and incident response for AI-specific failure modes alongside the rest of the stack.
  • Independent reviewerA second set of eyes for high-risk systems — internal, fractional, or external. Never the same person who built it.
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🗓️
Review cadence
A rhythm small teams can actually keep
  • Pre-deployment reviewBefore a new AI system or material change ships — risk classification, controls check, sign-off by the system owner and (for high-risk) the executive sponsor.
  • Monthly operational reviewInventory drift, incidents, evaluation results, and open actions. Lightweight. 30 minutes.
  • Quarterly governance reviewPolicy updates, risk-tier changes, vendor reassessments, and metrics for the executive sponsor.
  • Annual program reviewEnd-to-end review of the program, refresh of principles and roles, and a clean evidence pack for customers and (when needed) auditors.
  • Event-driven reviewTriggered by an incident, a new regulation, or a material model or vendor change. Standing process — not a fire drill.
Talk to us about your AI governance program →