Hold, here, means containment. Named owners, written rules, and a way to stop the work.
Wire Hold is an Arizona firm for AI and cybersecurity consulting. vCISO, AI governance, secure delivery.
The firm writes the controls, sits the vCISO role for the term, and leaves the program with the people who will run it.
16
Years in enterprise technology
11
Years in cybersecurity
26
Engineers in the largest organization led
F100
Fortune 100 payments, once
Packages
Four scoped ways in.
6–12 months
vCISO retainer
Part-time security executive. Roadmap, board risk, and the weekly operating cadence. The client's team stays the team.
- Security strategy, roadmap, and operating cadence
- Board-ready risk measures and decision support
- Program governance, resilience, and incident readiness
- Capability development for the internal team
4–6 weeks
AI enablement sprint
Pick the use cases, write the rules, name the owner.
- Use-case portfolio and adoption roadmap
- AI policy and control architecture
- Human approval, evidence, and rollback design
- Agent governance and operating model
Scoped program
AI-native modernization
Fix the security and IT workflow, not only the stack.
- AI-native operating model and workflow redesign
- Cybersecurity and IT process automation
- Platform, data, integration, and resilience roadmaps
- Technology rationalization and change enablement
Scoped build
Delivery sprint
Build one approved use case so it can ship, then hand it to someone on the client side.
- Architecture and implementation of the agreed use case
- MCP servers, agent toolchains, or control automation
- Evidence-driven remediation and operating documentation
- Internal owner and adoption path
Practice
Frameworks are the measuring stick, not the deliverable.
Security
- NIST CSF 2.0
- ISO/IEC 27001
- SOC 2
- CIS Controls v8
- FAIR
AI
- NIST AI RMF 1.0
- ISO/IEC 42001
- EU AI Act
How an engagement runs
01
Baseline
Establish what is actually true today: controls in place, real exposure, who owns what, and which decisions are already waiting on an answer.
02
Prioritize
Rank the work by risk reduced per unit of effort, and agree explicitly on what will not be done this quarter.
03
Operate
Track remediation and outcomes while resolving the executive decisions that keep the program moving.
04
Transfer
Leave documented decisions, working systems, and an internal owner who can carry the program after the firm steps back.
Confidential by default. Assumptions are stated. Source evidence is attached to every recommendation.
Firm record
What the practice has run
Across enterprise cybersecurity work, the practice has led organizations of up to 26 engineers, cut sensitive-data findings by 92% while tripling detection coverage, reduced open-source dependencies by more than 75%, and sustained 99.99% availability for critical transaction platforms.
Board-facing risk, CTEM, application and software supply-chain security, security data platforms, resilience, and governed AI, with hands-on product and engineering work.
- Credentials
- Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP)
- BA, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University
- Seat
- Arizona. Remote on Arizona time. On-site when it earns its place.
Selected work
security-recipes.ai
Turn CVE intelligence into verified, evidence-backed remediation teams can trust. Open, self-hostable knowledge layer linking source-backed CVE research to bounded remediation recipes, required evidence, rollback guidance, and human-reviewed outcomes.
266K+ CVEs · 167 reviewed workflows · 75 executable playbooks
Contact
stephenabbott20@gmail.com
Firm contact. The first working step is a baseline of what is actually true today. Scope is agreed before any work begins. No prices on the site — scope drives the quote after a first conversation.
Principal, Stephen M Abbott.