Security for startups

Security work rarely arrives on a startup's schedule. A customer sends a questionnaire during a deal. An investor asks for evidence during diligence. A new feature raises questions a week before launch.

Digital Consulting, Inc. helps software and AI companies handle those moments without turning a first engagement into an open-ended consulting project.

Built for: B2B software and AI companies with no full-time security lead.
Engagement model: Fixed-fee starting projects, and monthly fractional leadership.

Already have a deadline? Contact us to discuss.

Fixed-scope starting points

Every engagement is scoped in writing before work begins. The scope names the work included, what you receive at the end, and what will still be outstanding when the project closes. Each one draws on our services, cut to the size of a first engagement.

Customer security questionnaire sprint

When it fits: A customer has sent a security questionnaire and expects a defensible response.

We work through the questionnaire with your team, find the evidence behind each answer, and flag anything that should not be represented as complete. Most of our experience is from the answering side of enterprise security reviews, at companies whose customers ran exactly this process on them.

Reviews often carry on past the spreadsheet, into how tenants are isolated, how authentication and session handling work, how the API authorizes each object rather than each endpoint, and who can reach production. Those questions can be scoped in when they are the ones holding up the deal.

You receive: The completed questionnaire, a reusable answer library, an evidence index, and a short list of gaps likely to matter in the next customer review.

Security baseline and roadmap

When it fits: You want to know where the company stands before a customer, an auditor, or an investor asks.

The review covers the practices most relevant to your business, your product, your data, your infrastructure, and what you plan to ship next. You get a short list ordered by urgency rather than a maturity score, because a score does not tell you which thing to do on Monday. Where the review exists because a customer or an auditor asked, SOC 2 or ISO/IEC 27001 can organize it, and the priorities still come from your systems and your commitments.

You receive: A current-state summary, prioritized findings, and a roadmap organized around the next 30, 60, and 90 days.

First threat model

When it fits: An application, API, platform, or significant feature has never been examined systematically for security risk.

Your engineers do the thinking and we run the session, documenting the system, its trust boundaries, the credible threats against it, and the mitigations worth making. The format stays deliberately plain, so the team can repeat it as the product changes.

You receive: A system and data-flow diagram, documented threats and assumptions, prioritized mitigations, and a format your team can reuse without us.

Investor or acquisition readiness review

When it fits: You are preparing for fundraising, investor diligence, or an acquisition review.

We read your security the way the party running diligence will read it, list the questions likely to come back, and separate the gaps worth closing first from the ones you can explain accurately. This is preparation on your side of the table, and it is never the diligence itself.

You receive: A readiness assessment, a prioritized remediation list, a security data-room checklist, and preparation for the follow-up questions most likely to arrive.

AI feature security review

When it fits: An AI-enabled feature is approaching design approval, customer review, or release.

The review follows the feature end to end: architecture, data flows, permissions, model and vendor dependencies, retrieval sources, tools and agents, foreseeable misuse, output handling, retention, monitoring, and testing. Where they help, the review draws on the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and the OWASP guidance for generative AI. It is an advisory security review: it certifies nothing, and it guarantees nothing about how the model behaves.

You receive: An architecture-focused security review, prioritized findings, recommended changes, and a record of the assumptions and decisions behind them.

Ongoing support

Fractional product security leadership

When it fits: The company needs continuing product security ownership and is not ready to hire a full-time security leader.

A named security lead works with your management and engineering on an agreed cadence. Depending on scope, that covers maintaining the security roadmap, reviewing product decisions, supporting customer and investor conversations, coordinating assessments, and helping the company decide what to take on next.

You receive: Continuing security leadership, a maintained backlog and roadmap, documented decisions, and regular updates to management.

Other work we can scope

Some situations start somewhere else. We also help software companies stand up product security incident response and coordinated vulnerability disclosure, meet software supply chain requirements including SBOM and vulnerability communication, and review secure development practices. If one of those is why you are here, say which and when you need it, and we will propose a starting scope.

What a deliverable contains

A threat model, for example, records the system and its trust boundaries, the assets worth protecting, the assumptions being made, the credible attack paths, the mitigations worth the effort, and who owns each piece of follow-up work.

Engineers work from the detail when they change the design. Whoever answers to the board tracks the decisions and the risk still outstanding. Parts of it hold up under a customer's security review, which is the test that matters most.

Experience behind the work

All engagements are led by seasoned security professionals with decades of experience across software engineering, product and application security, penetration testing, security architecture, incident response, customer assurance, and security program leadership.

Our work connects technical detail with business decisions. Findings and recommendations are written for everyone responsible for acting on them, including engineers, company leaders, customers, auditors, and investors.

What we do not do

We do not run your IT, monitor your systems, or answer your helpdesk. We sell no security products and take no commission from any vendor, so a recommendation reflects your requirements, what you already run, and what you can take on now. Where testing is needed, we scope it, help you choose a provider, and work through what comes back; the testing itself is done by that provider.

You keep everything produced during an engagement. It is written so your own team, or a security hire who arrives later, can carry on from it without us.

How engagements are priced

Each fixed-scope service is quoted as a fixed fee, and fractional leadership runs on a monthly retainer. Scope, fees, assumptions, and deliverables are agreed in writing before work begins, which is step two of the engagement process. If the first piece of work turns up more, we set out the options before anything expands.

Starting a conversation

Tell us what set this off, when a response is due, and which of the six looks closest. If none of them is an exact match, forward the questionnaire or the email that started it and we will work out whether a small, clearly defined engagement makes sense. You do not need to prepare a scope beforehand.