CISO Readiness India.
Know exactly where you stand.

A full-time CISO is typically justified when: (1) You are a regulated financial services entity (bank, NBFC, insurance company) with RBI/SEBI/IRDAI-mandated CISO appointment; (2) Revenue exceeds ₹500Cr and IT is a core part of the business; (3) You process sensitive data at significant scale (health records, financial data, biometrics); (4) You have a large IT team (20+) requiring security leadership. For most Indian SMEs, a Fractional CISO (2–4 days/month) or Virtual CISO provides the same governance at 10–20% of full-time cost.

CISO appointment is mandated by: (1) RBI — all banks, NBFCs with asset size above ₹5,000Cr, and payment system operators must appoint a CISO reporting to the board; (2) SEBI — stock brokers, depositories, and mutual funds must appoint a CISO; (3) IRDAI — insurers must appoint a CISO. The DPDP Act 2023 requires Significant Data Fiduciaries to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) — a distinct role from CISO but with overlapping governance responsibilities. Non-regulated Indian businesses do not have a statutory CISO mandate but may face customer contractual requirements.

A Fractional CISO is a senior security executive engaged part-time (typically 2–8 days/month) who is embedded with your team — attending board meetings, managing your security vendors, and leading your security programme as a part-time executive. A Virtual CISO (vCISO) is typically more advisory — providing security strategy guidance, policy review, and compliance advice remotely without the embedded engagement model. IBEAN's Fractional CISO is the embedded model — attending board and management meetings, directly managing vendor relationships, and accountable for security outcomes.

IBEAN Fractional CISO monthly activities: Security governance — monthly board/management security report, security KPI tracking; Vendor management — security review of new vendors, annual vendor security assessments; Incident management — on-call support for security incidents, breach response coordination; Compliance — DPDP Act, ISO 27001, or regulatory compliance tracking; Team development — security awareness training, phishing simulation, IT team security upskilling; Risk management — maintaining and updating the security risk register; Project oversight — security review of new IT projects and system changes.