vCISO / Fractional CISO in Texas
There is a stage where a company needs security judgment more than it needs another security product. A fractional CISO gives you that judgment: a program, a budget you can defend, and one person accountable for the answer when the board asks. Sentinel-Pros delivers this remotely for clients across Texas, on-site in Houston, with travel scheduled from Houston elsewhere.
The Problem
Somewhere between fifty and a hundred and fifty employees, security stops being a task and becomes a function nobody owns. The IT manager makes security decisions without the mandate or the executive time to make them stick. The CFO signs off on tools without a way to know whether the spend reduced risk. Customer questionnaires, insurer applications, and contract clauses land in different inboxes and get answered inconsistently. A full-time chief information security officer is a serious salary that a company this size cannot usually justify, so the role goes unfilled and the work distributes itself badly. Then a board member, a lender, or an acquirer asks who owns security and what the plan is, and there is no clean answer because the honest one is that six people own pieces of it.
The Solution
We take the role rather than the task list. That means owning the security program: a risk register leadership actually reviews, a policy set that reflects how the company works, a roadmap with sequencing and cost, and reporting written for a board rather than for engineers. It also means being the person who represents security to customers, insurers, auditors, and lenders, so your IT team stops fielding questions they should not have to answer alone. The engagement is a defined slice of time each month, not an on-call arrangement with no shape. Delivery is remote, which fits leadership work built on conversations, documents, and decisions, and clients anywhere in Texas get the same attention. Houston clients can have us in the room for leadership and board sessions, and we schedule travel from Houston for clients elsewhere when a session deserves it. Pricing is a fixed monthly retainer scoped on a discovery call.
Core Responsibilities
Program Ownership
Executive And Board Reporting
Facing Outward
Engagement Process
Understand The Business First
We start with how the company makes money, who its customers are, what a bad week looks like operationally, and what leadership is already worried about. Security priorities that ignore the business get ignored in return.
Establish The Baseline
We assess the current program, the controls, the obligations in your contracts, and the risks that matter, then present it to leadership in language they can act on without translation.
Set The Program And The Cadence
Roadmap, policy set, risk register, and a meeting rhythm get established, including how often leadership reviews risk and how security shows up in board materials.
Run It And Represent It
We execute the roadmap with your team, adjust as the business changes, and act as the accountable security voice to customers, insurers, auditors, and the board.
Where We Deliver This
Common Questions
How is this different from just buying more managed security services?
Managed services operate controls. A fractional CISO decides which controls you need, in what order, and how much they are worth to the business, then explains that decision to your board. Companies frequently buy tooling for years without the leadership layer and cannot say whether their risk went down.
Will a fractional CISO displace our IT manager?
No, and the arrangement works best when that person is a partner in it. Your IT lead keeps operational ownership of the environment. We supply the executive layer above it: strategy, risk decisions, budget argument, and outward representation, all of which are work an operations manager should not have to carry.
How much time do we actually get?
A defined allocation each month, agreed at the start, covering leadership sessions, program work, and outside-facing requests. We would rather set an honest ceiling and hold to it than sell unlimited access that gets rationed quietly.
Our leadership team is in Dallas and our operations are in West Texas. Does that work?
It works well. The role runs on conversations, documents, and decisions, so remote delivery loses very little. We attend on-site in Houston, and for a quarterly leadership or board session elsewhere in Texas we schedule travel from Houston when being in the room is worth it.
When does a company outgrow a fractional arrangement?
Usually when security work becomes constant rather than periodic, often driven by headcount growth, a regulated acquisition, or a customer base that demands continuous attention. We will say so when that point arrives, and we would rather help you hire and onboard a full-time leader than stay past our usefulness.
Ready to get started?
BOOK A CONSULTATIONAcross Texas
The Texas companies that need this role most are rarely technology companies. They are energy services firms in Houston and Midland whose operator customers have started writing security clauses into master service agreements, and whose leadership now needs someone who can sit across from a supermajor's vendor risk team. They are industrial manufacturers and fabricators along the Gulf Coast and the Interstate 35 corridor supplying customers who ask for documented programs before renewal. They are physician groups, dental groups, and behavioral health organisations that grew by acquisition across San Antonio, Austin, and the Valley, and now carry patient data in three different systems with nobody accountable for the whole picture. They are engineering and construction firms in Dallas and Fort Worth carrying project data for clients who audit their vendors. They are financial services, title, and insurance agencies statewide answering examiner questions. They are aerospace and defense suppliers around Fort Worth and San Antonio whose prime contractors expect a named security owner on the other end of an email. In each case the company is large enough that a serious incident would be existential and small enough that a full-time security executive is not a realistic hire. That is precisely the gap this role fills.
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