KPMG in Qatar Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (V-CISO) Services:
With the advent of emerging technologies and ever-increasing threat landscape, organizations are constantly challenged with adapting their digital strategies to keep with the competitive markets whilst maintaining their services secure and compliant with regulatory and privacy requirements. Access to maintain diverse and expert skillsets are challenging for organizations, given the market shortage of skilled cybersecurity expertise that spans the various technologies.
The V-CISO solves complex challenges faced daily by organizations, by enabling easy-to-access, on-demand expert advice. Tailored to your organization needs, a broad services catalog can be easily accessed for the organization teams who need it, when they need it.
There are three core areas that such a V-CISO service can be leveraged:
- Strategic & Leadership Services
- Secure Journeys & Operational Excellence enablement
- Tailored Services
With each of the domains offering extensive access to services, the V-CISO can address many typical needs for your organization:
- Gap within cybersecurity leadership requiring expert cyber strategy formulation, roadmap, execution plans or recommendations on organization cyber investment priorities
- Current State Maturity Assessment (CMA) Formulation and/or Enablement of Target-Operation-Model (TOM) to support digital transformation journeys, product development or cloud adoption
- Streamline security operations, cyber risk management and compliance to ensure simpler and continuous visibility
Some of the scenarios where you might need a V-CISO service:
- Organization is setting up a new cybersecurity function and needs to be walked-through this process.
- Organization that are undergoing digital transformation or adopting cloud (Hybrid (on-premise/cloud), or multi-cloud)
- Entities with existing gap or in the process of hiring a new CISO or Head of Cybersecurity and need an interim support
- Organizations that are trying to meet regulatory compliance and privacy requirements and don’t know where to start
- Organizations that are overwhelmed by the cybersecurity operations and needs to reduce complexity and improve operations whilst managing costs/investments
- Organizations that lack certain cybersecurity specialties or deliverables and wish to access them for short-term and not hire a full-time resource
- Organizations that need an adaptive model to consume cybersecurity services on-demand with simple way and short time-frames
How does it work?
- Send us an email at vciso-qa@kpmg.com and someone will connect with you for a quick online or on-site session
- Sign-up a simple on-demand agreement tailored to your organizational needs:
- V-CISO – Silver: Foundational Virtual CISO suited for Small & Medium organizations
- V-CISO-Advance: Suited for organizations undergoing cyber, risk transformation and GRC enablement to advance their cyber operations for both medium and large organizations
- V-CISO-Apex: Large & Complex requirements bringing expert insights and support for existing cyber operations CISOs and their teams
- On-site on-boarding workshop to understand your organization's needs and plan the priorities for your V-CISO engagement
- Request V-CISO services either on-demand or according to your on-boarding roadmap plan and organization needs.
- Upon agreed service time, our expert V-CISO team will work with you either on-site or remotely to deliver the requested services
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's):
Depending on the plan chosen, hours allocated are valid for one-year period from the start date. Once the hours are consumed, you may request additional hours as per your organizational needs (minimum of 25 hours increment)
The V-CISO service can be conducted remotely or on-site depending on the requested service from the service catalog.
You can top-up if your planned hours were all consumed. (minimum of 25 hours increment)
The Virtual Chief Information Security Officer (V-CISO) may not take management decisions on behalf of the department and shall make sound recommendations to support the decision-making process.
Yes, you will be assigned an expert CISO who will be interfacing with your organization
The V-CISO service offered by KPMG provides easy on-demand cyber experts who have served or delivered at a leadership levels and provides access to an extended team of expert in a simple on-demand model. This allows both simple and relevant consumption of services to suit the needs and challenges of the organization. The categories of services include:
Strategic & Leadership related Services
Secure Journeys & Operational Excellence enablement Services
Tailored Services
Please review the services catalogue which covers different categories of services:
- Strategic & Leadership related Services
- Secure Journeys & Operational Excellence enablement Services
- Tailored Services
The services of the V-CISO are not operational in nature (i.e. day-to-day administration of security controls), but rather supporting both leadership and operational excellence including resolution of both tactical and strategic organizational challenges and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements (PDPPL, QCSF, NIA, ISO27001, PCI-DSS, etc.)
Engagement plan is a mean to support your organization to achieve its targeted objectives, by identifying, prioritizing and enabling cybersecurity operations and goals through efficient use of your V-CISO plan to align to the intended objectives.
The onboarding process is simple and interactive process that aims to get fast and efficient understanding of your organizational unique context, including challenges, risks and capabilities. This is done at the beginning of the engagement to ensure that a robust and clear program of work for your organization is in place and objectives are clear, and KPMG team delivers a clear path to achieve tangible results based on the V-CISO tickets listed as par to the onboarding report.
To create a meaningful experience, the program is tailored to the organization selected plan and specific needs. We believe that some components need face-to-face interaction and will be conducted accordingly. Whereas some other components might be best fit to meet and deliver remotely. Therefore, it is always a combination of on-site and remote with the percentages broken down differently according to the plan.
Gap within cybersecurity leadership requiring expert cyber strategy formulation, roadmap, execution plans or recommendations on organization cyber investment priorities
Secure transformation journeys to the cloud or management of a hybrid environment with on-premise, private and public cloud
Lack of clarity on priorities and roadmap
Current State Maturity Assessment (CMA) Formulation and/or Enablement of Target-Operation-Model (TOM) to support digital transformation journeys, product development or cloud adoption
Governance, Risk and Compliance gaps that require structuring or immediate response.
Streamline security operations, cyber risk management and compliance to ensure simpler and continuous visibility
Preparedness of the organization for incident response and recovery
The V-CISO model is simple and quickly accessible and aims to deliver services as soon as possible, simply reach out to vciso-qa@kpmg.com or call us on +974 44576444 and someone will be happily guide you to the most-suited plan for your organization based on your specific needs.
Once a plan is selected, you will be assigned a designated V-CISO and within 3-5 working days an on-site onboarding session will be scheduled.
Yes, V-CISO is tailored to your organization needs, that’s why KPMG starts with an on-site onboarding sessions to get the context of your organization, challenges, risks, and priorities to ensure a well-aligned program of work is in place with an actionable roadmap by our expert V-CISO
As a global and EMEA leader in cybersecurity, KPMG brings wealth of expertise across multiple sectors and first-hand experience with regulations, standards, and best practices for cybersecurity. The V-CISO services are supported by expert Subject Matter Experts with wealth of local and international experience including multi-lingual consultants.
Partnering with KPMG on the V-CISO services will bring tangible results that makes impact on organizational security posture, resilience and overall compliance with regulations, industry and international standards.
KPMG has expert CISOs that have solved complex challenges for organizations and delivered extensive engagements with capabilities across the various domains covering strategic and operational aspects of cybersecurity.
Having expert-extended support through KPMG ecosystem and access to expertise is something that will profoundly ensure quality and timeliness with clear SLAs defined for each of the plans.
This is a plan-based service, so your organization will retain access to the KPMG V-CISO team for the allotted hours as per the plan and will pre-pay for the services. Balance is updated upon delivery of each service.
Clarity on way forward and how to structure, invest and operate securely within the organization constraints
Improved Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) services which enable smooth and risk-based decision-making and operations.
Ensuring an effective and continuous compliance with regulatory requirements, standards and laws through a structured compliance program
Delivery of enabling toolkits and documentation related to compliance and operation of your cybersecurity function
Expert problem-solving capability for evolving challenges that require many years of experience and strategic decisions
Report of current maturity assessment and prioritized roadmap and implementation plans
Improved visibility and secure posture management for the organization and stakeholders
