Cybersecurity advisory for funded startups
Build the security readiness your next stage demands. Independent advisory for seed through Series B companies preparing for enterprise customers, investor diligence, and board scrutiny.
What you build before a breach determines what you can do during it.
Who this is for
Enterprise procurement, security questionnaires, investor diligence and incident response don't wait until you've hired a full security team. FIRST48CISO gives you clear answers and a credible program now.
Enterprise buyers will ask, and a weak answer can stall the deal. We help you understand what they're evaluating and what you need to show them.
Investors at Series A and B increasingly ask about governance, incident response and compliance status. We turn your current reality into an accurate picture and a practical roadmap.
These frameworks show up as customer requirements before they become compliance milestones. We scope what your situation actually requires and sequence the work so it stays practical.
Most founders think about incident response after an incident. We help you build the structure that shapes how the first 48 hours go, before you ever need it.
Advisory services
Independent advisory and program design. There is no product to resell and no tool to implement. You get a clear assessment, honest prioritization, and the structure your stage requires.
Every ongoing advisory engagement includes a board-ready incident response plan. The Readiness Assessment identifies what that plan needs to cover and prioritizes the work required to build it.
Most companies begin here. We identify what is creating urgency, what evidence already exists, what is missing, and what should happen next. If ongoing leadership makes sense, the assessment leads directly into Security Advisory.
A current-state view of your security posture
Framework mapping across SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR
A list of evidence gaps
A prioritized readiness roadmap with recommended owners and next actions
An executive summary for leadership, board and investor discussions
Executive security guidance on a part-time basis: strategy, board briefings, vendor reviews and program oversight for companies that need senior perspective without a full-time hire.
Security strategy and program oversight
Board-level risk communication
Vendor and tool evaluation
Compliance milestone planning
A tested incident response plan and the structure to run it, built before you need it and fitted to your regulatory and operational environment.
Incident response plan development and review
Tabletop exercise facilitation
Regulatory notification mapping
Executive decision frameworks
The First 48 principle
Most companies discover that their incident response capability was decided long before the incident. The decisions that shape how a breach plays out, such as who gets called, what gets disclosed and how quickly you contain it, were already made or left unmade in the months before.
That window is what FIRST48CISO is built around. We don't provide emergency response. We build the preparation that makes an emergency manageable, and investors and enterprise customers increasingly want to see that plan before they extend trust.
Containment and activation run in parallel. Who has authority, and which systems get isolated? An undocumented plan costs you time here.
Legal and regulatory triage. Notification clocks under state breach laws, HIPAA, GDPR and customer contracts can start before you know the full scope.
Board and customer communication. What you say is shaped by what you actually know and by the structure behind it.
The work that determines all of the above: playbooks, roles, regulatory mapping and evidence logs, built before you need them.
About the founder
Dianne Powers founded FIRST48CISO through The Pearltech Group after more than 15 years building and running cybersecurity programs across critical infrastructure, state government, semiconductors and global enterprise.
At Deloitte, she led the managed SOC transition for the State of California. She was a founding member of the first security operations centers at AMD and Entergy, and for the State of Texas she owned SOC tooling and managed security services contracts from RFP through vendor delivery.
That background shapes what FIRST48CISO delivers: security programs built to the standard large organizations apply in diligence, scaled to your stage and to what your customers and investors need to see.
FIRST48CISO is independent. There are no tool partnerships and no implementation services to upsell, so the assessment reflects your situation rather than a product catalog.
PMP, CSM and ITIL
NIST CSF and NIST SP 800-53
SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR readiness
SEC cybersecurity disclosure rules
MS in Artificial Intelligence, Eastern University (in progress)
The Breach Report
The Breach Report is FIRST48CISO's public incident analysis publication, translating real incidents into practical lessons for founders and leadership teams.
Real incident breakdowns with the founder angle: what failed, what it cost, and what a company your size should have had in place. Published every weekday, with practical coverage of AI and AI-agent risk.
Enterprise Readiness Call
A free 20-minute conversation for founders and leadership teams preparing for enterprise customer security reviews, investor diligence, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 requirements, or incident-readiness concerns. You'll leave with a clear read on where you stand and the priorities that matter most at your stage, whether or not we work together.
Free resource
A practical guide to the decisions that matter in the first two days of a security incident: who to call, what to contain, when notification clocks may start, and what to tell your board. Written for founders and leadership teams, not security specialists.
No spam. We'll only send the playbook.
Free self-assessment
Answer 16 questions about how your company handles security today. You'll see where you stand across the eight areas enterprise customers, investors and auditors review, and the three things to fix first. Your results are emailed to you so you can share them with your team.
Independent cybersecurity advisory for funded startups. A practice of The Pearltech Group, based in Miami.
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