Fractional vCISO & ISO 27001 Certification

Client Challenge

The client, an enterprise B2B SaaS platform provider based in London, was closing deals with Tier-1 multinational clients. However, sales cycles were stalling during the vendor risk review phase due to the absence of formal ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II credentials.

The engineering team lacked dedicated security leadership, resulting in ad-hoc IAM access, undocumented incident response runbooks, and no formal Information Security Management System (ISMS).

Fractional vCISO Strategy & Execution

Operating on a 16 hour/month executive advisory retainer, M.Sher executed a 3-phase governance transformation:

• ISMS & Policy Scoping: Authored 24 customized, practical security policies covering Access Control, Cryptography, Secure SDLC, Incident Response, and Business Continuity.
• Technical Control Implementation: Deployed AWS Security Hub, automated vulnerability scanning in GitHub Actions, and centralized IAM conditional access policies using Okta with hardware security keys.
• Risk Assessment & Statement of Applicability: Conducted comprehensive asset risk assessments across all cloud repositories and vendor dependencies, establishing formal Annex A control mapping for all 93 controls.
• Lead Auditor Defense: Directed internal pre-audits and represented the organization directly during Stage 1 and Stage 2 certification audits with the UKAS-accredited certification body.

Business Impact & Revenue Unlock

• Zero Non-Conformities: Successfully passed Stage 2 certification with zero major or minor findings on the first attempt.
• £2.4M Enterprise Contracts Closed: Overcame security questionnaire blockers across 5 major financial and healthcare enterprise deals.
• Automated Evidence Gathering: Integrated continuous cloud posture monitoring, reducing recurring annual audit preparation from weeks to hours.