One team.
Four disciplines.
Every month.
Most companies manage technology reactively. Something breaks, they fix it. A compliance question comes up, they scramble. The Advisory Retainer replaces that with a standing team — the same people, every month, who know your environment and can make decisions with you when it actually matters.
Four disciplines that don't operate in isolation.
A security decision that ignores how the technology is architected creates friction. A technology decision made without a privacy lens creates compliance exposure. An information management strategy that doesn't account for security controls is a liability waiting to surface.
Most fractional arrangements solve one of these problems and leave the rest to the client to coordinate. The Advisory Retainer covers all four — security, technology strategy, information management, and privacy — as one integrated engagement. The integration layer is handled internally. That's not a feature; it's the point.
The companies that come to us for an ongoing engagement are typically in one of two situations: they've had a wake-up call and want to get ahead of the next one, or they're growing fast enough that ad-hoc technology decision-making is starting to create real risk — in deals, in compliance, in operations.
- Consistent accessNot a monthly check-in — a standing relationship. When a vendor question surfaces, a board ask comes in, or a decision needs a fast read, the team is reachable.
- Embedded contextThe same people work the engagement over time. They know the stack, the vendors, the team dynamics, the history of past decisions. Recommendations land in context, not in a vacuum.
- One point of accountabilityOne engagement, one firm, one relationship. When something goes wrong — or needs to go right — there's no ambiguity about who owns it.
- Practical outputsDecisions made, risks addressed, vendors evaluated, board questions answered. Not a stack of documentation that no one acts on.
Scoped to where you are, not a one-size bundle.
Tiers are defined by monthly hours — how much time each discipline is engaged on your account. What changes across tiers is capacity, not which roles are involved. Pricing is "starting at" by design; the engagement adjusts to the actual scope.
Essentials
Starting at · Privacy added at Growth
Structured executive leadership across security, IT, and technology strategy. Essentials clients are typically below the revenue and data-collection thresholds that trigger formal privacy obligations under CCPA, GDPR, and similar laws — so the CPO function is not yet formally engaged. TinBOX tracks those thresholds on an ongoing basis as part of the engagement, so when the client's growth crosses into regulated territory, the transition to Growth is planned, not a scramble.
- IT & security roadmap, reviewed quarterly
- Risk register with prioritized remediation
- Security & privacy policy development
- Vendor management oversight
- Monthly leadership check-in
Growth
Starting at · All four disciplines
Full four-discipline coverage at a cadence built for organizations where technology decisions are moving fast. Active senior oversight across every function — not reactive check-ins.
- Everything in Essentials, monthly cadence
- Monthly scheduled advisory session
- Compliance framework mapping included
- Tabletop incident response exercise
- Quarterly business review, all advisors present
Full Stack
Starting at · All four disciplines
Continuous senior oversight across all four disciplines. For organizations with active compliance obligations, regulatory exposure, or environments that require a deeper ongoing presence — not periodic oversight.
- Everything in Growth, monthly vendor & privacy risk review
- Board-ready IT strategy package, quarterly
- Standing 24×7 incident escalation access
Incident Response Retainer
The Incident Response Retainer is not a standalone product. It layers onto an existing Advisory Retainer — buying priority access and a locked hourly rate before an incident happens, not after.
The difference between a rate negotiated in advance and a rate negotiated during an active incident is significant. Organizations that have been through one tend to understand this. The IR Retainer is how you avoid finding out the hard way.
Technology Strategy
A technology portfolio can be on time and on budget while the business is still failing strategically. That gap — between what technology is doing and what the business actually needs it to do — is what the CTO function owns.
On the Advisory Retainer, that means ongoing oversight of which technology bets deserve continued investment, which don't, and the engineering culture that turns strategic intent into shipped product. Not a one-time roadmap — a standing view that adjusts as the business does.
- Technology directionA clear line from what the business is trying to achieve to which technology investments actually deserve funding — reviewed on a recurring basis, not set and forgotten.
- Portfolio decisionsDisciplined evaluation of competing bets — strategic fit, feasibility, timing — so resources go to what matters, not whatever's loudest or most recently pitched.
- Build-vs-buy judgmentBacked by real cost analysis, not whichever vendor pitched hardest. A second set of eyes on every major commitment before it's made.
- Engineering cultureIncentives and review behaviors that reward disciplined experimentation and treat a validated failure differently than a preventable one.
IT Strategy & Operations
IT strategy is only as good as the roadmap that makes it real. The CIO function on the Advisory Retainer turns business goals into an actual technology roadmap — and then owns the vendor relationships, budget decisions, and operational oversight that keep it moving instead of stalling out.
AI adoption governance and business continuity planning sit here on an ongoing basis. For organizations navigating significant M&A activity, that work runs as a dedicated engagement alongside the retainer. M&A Due Diligence →
- Roadmap tied to the businessA 12-month technology horizon, refreshed as priorities shift — not a generic IT wishlist that predates the current strategy by two years.
- Vendor and spend controlOne owner for vendor relationships and software spend. No more three tools quietly doing the same job, renewing on autopilot in someone's personal inbox.
- AI governanceAdoption brought under one roadmap. Governance for tools the team is already using ahead of any policy — before an incident makes it urgent.
- Business continuityA real plan for how operations continue when systems go down — documented, tested, and owned by someone who will be there when it is needed.
Security Risk Leadership
The CISO function owns whether your business can say "we're secure" and back it up — not with a policy document, but with actual controls, tested assumptions, and a risk picture that updates as the environment changes.
On the Advisory Retainer, that means ongoing security posture management, compliance gap tracking against the frameworks that matter for your business, and the incident response readiness that lets you handle something when it happens instead of discovering your plan didn't hold. Compliance certifications — SOC 2, ISO 27001, CMMC, and others — run as dedicated project engagements when they're needed.
- Posture visibilityConcrete, recurring security reporting — control coverage, findings, trend direction — not vague reassurance that things are fine.
- Compliance gap ownershipStatus against applicable frameworks tracked on an ongoing basis, mapped to what actually matters for your business — not a one-time snapshot that ages immediately.
- Vendor risk oversightOngoing assessment of whether the tools the team adopts are safe to trust with your data — evaluated before they're embedded, not after.
- Incident readinessA tested incident response plan and the leadership in place to execute it — built before something happens, not assembled during it.
Privacy & Data Protection
The privacy function owns whether your business can legally collect, use, and move data — across every jurisdiction your customers, employees, or vendors touch. That obligation doesn't simplify as the business grows; it compounds.
On the Advisory Retainer, this operates with the independence a real Data Protection Officer role requires. Privacy isn't bolted onto someone else's job description. It runs as a standing function with its own accountability — alongside the other three disciplines in a way that reflects how security, technology, and data governance actually interact in practice.
- Ongoing complianceRegular privacy snapshots across the jurisdictions that apply — GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, VCDPA, and others — tracked on the same cadence as the business, not pulled together reactively.
- Data mapping, maintainedUnderstanding what data exists and where it flows, kept current as systems change — not reconstructed from scratch the next time an audit or incident requires it.
- Vendor privacy riskOngoing assessment of vendors handling personal data on your behalf — who has access, under what terms, and whether the transfer mechanisms hold up to scrutiny.
- Breach response readinessKnowing which jurisdiction's notification obligations apply, to whom, and by when — before there's a breach, not while the clocks are already running.
Start with the assessment, not a sales call.
Most Advisory Retainer engagements begin with a Technology Strategy Assessment — a fixed-fee, no-pressure look at where infrastructure, security, and compliance posture actually stand, with the full leadership team in the room. It's how we start a working relationship without either party committing to something they haven't seen yet.