Sophos has launched CISO Advantage, an AI-enabled cybersecurity offering designed to help organizations assess risk, prioritize remediation, and track security progress while giving MSPs a more structured way to deliver virtual CISO services.
The launch comes as more customers look to managed service providers for strategic security leadership. Sophos’ 2026 MSP Perspective Report found that 46% of customers already rely on their MSP to act as a CISO, while 84% of MSPs expect demand for those services to increase over the next year.
Delivered through the Sophos Fusion platform, CISO Advantage is intended to turn that growing demand into a more scalable service model by helping partners build security assessments, map controls to established frameworks, and create prioritized, budget-aligned roadmaps for customers.
Sophos connects security operations with CISO strategy
Sophos CISO Advantage will provide organizations with a clear picture of their cyber risk, a prioritized plan to reduce it, and measurable proof of progress.
“Good security strategy has always required expertise that’s too scarce to scale, so it’s stayed a luxury only the largest enterprises could afford,” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president, product management, Sophos.
“Sophos CISO Advantage changes that. We built it around the question every board is now asking its security team: are we safer than we were last quarter, and can you prove it? Putting a credible answer within reach of any organization, not just the ones that can staff a large security team, is how the industry starts to close the resilience gap,” Harrison adds.
This latest Sophos offering assesses the organization’s environment, maps it against industry frameworks, and turns the result into a prioritized plan.
CISO Advantage builds security roadmaps from assessments
The solution builds a security assessment tailored to each organization’s environment and threat profile, and maps controls against frameworks, including NIST CSF, CIS v8, Cyber Essentials Plus, and NCSC CAF. The results of these assessments are then turned into a prioritized, budget-aligned roadmap of what to fix first, how much it costs, and why it matters to the business.
Organizations can run and own the program themselves with internal teams driving strategy and using Sophos CISO Advantage as their system of record, or start with an MSP partner to stand up the program, build confidence, and then transition to running it in-house.
Other organizations can start with a baseline assessment of their program and transition to a continuously managed service delivered entirely through a trusted partner.
The solution is designed to support each of these pathways.
MSPs gain a framework for scalable vCISO services
For MSPs acting as the CISO for their customers, the solution can turn that role into a structured, scalable, and billable service.
“CISOs are being asked to move faster, manage more risk, and show meaningful progress to boards, regulators, and insurers,” said Phil Haris, research director, governance, risk, and compliance solutions, IDC.
“There are too many tools out there that track activity without any insight. What security leaders need now is a solution that helps them understand where they stand, take action, and clearly show how their security posture is improving.”
“The vendors that can bring that together in one AI-native system, from assessment through remediation, will be the ones that shape where this market goes next,” Haris added.
Organizations increasingly require technology management to stay secure, and MSPs are being relied on to serve as de facto CISOs. Read more from the MSP Perspective Report on this growing trend.