Most contracts get re-signed against a number nobody checked, for a scope written three years ago. We put four to six vetted providers next to your incumbent before you commit.
You sign directly with whoever you pick. We never get on the paper.
The incumbent is one of these. It might still be the right one — but you'd want to know that rather than assume it.
Your provider knows what the market pays. You don't.
They know the discount thresholds, the quarter-end pressure points, and what three comparable accounts signed for last month. You know your invoice. That gap is where renewal increases come from, and it isn't a failure of your team — evaluating a market is a full-time job, and you already have one.
Closing that gap is our full-time job. Not so you can buy cheaper, but so the thing you sign actually matches what you need now instead of what you needed when you signed it.
What we source
Four situations, rather than a list of technologies. Most conversations start in one of them and end up touching two.
Run it — or help us run it
Some clients hand the whole environment over. Most don't. The more common shape is co-managed: your team keeps control and hands off whatever is eating their week — after-hours coverage, tier-one tickets, patching. Which providers fit depends on how much internal IT you have and what you actually want to stop doing. We work that out with you before anyone gets introduced.
Watch it around the clock
Some of our providers do nothing but security — 24/7 SOC, human threat hunting, incident response with contractual response times. Others fold monitoring into a broader IT relationship. Which one is right depends on whether you have internal security staff and what you're being audited against. We'll tell you which of those two you actually need before we introduce anyone.
Get it back when something goes wrong
Most backup contracts get renewed without anyone testing a restore. The gap between "we have backups" and "we can be running by Thursday" is where the damage happens. Providers here range from straightforward cloud backup to isolated, air-gapped recovery environments built specifically for ransomware. The right answer depends on what a day of downtime actually costs you.
House it and modernize it
Not everything belongs in a hyperscaler, and not everything should be migrated off what it's running on now. Some of our providers own their facilities. Some specialize in workloads a generalist would tell you to abandon. Before you move anything, it's worth knowing which of those you're dealing with.
Leadership and readiness, without the headcount
Running underneath all four: fractional security and technology leadership, compliance readiness for the frameworks your customers and auditors ask about, assessments, migration planning. Usually the thing someone needs when a deadline arrives and hiring for it would take six months.
There's more than one kind of middle.
A systems integrator or reseller buys the product and sells it to you on their paper, with their margin inside it. They're good at what they do, and if you have one you trust, keep them.
We work differently. We don't resell anything, we don't carry a quota for any manufacturer, and we never appear on your contract. We source services — the ongoing kind, the ones you live with for years — and connect you directly to the providers who deliver them.
You sign with them. Not with us.
How it works
Tell us what's coming up and what went wrong last time. We open with a review of what your current provider actually delivered against what you needed, not with pricing.
We narrow the field. Four to six providers that fit your size, your compliance picture, and where you're heading — not everyone who could technically do it.
Independent engineers pull apart what each one is really proposing, at no cost to you. Most proposals differ in ways that don't show up in the summary.
You choose, and you contract directly with them. We stay in it through implementation, because the introduction was never the hard part.
What this has looked like
A medical device company needed a security leader. Hiring one would have taken six months.
The situation
The company was scaling fast, and regulatory scrutiny was scaling with it. Leadership knew they needed senior security oversight, and they knew what the alternative looked like: a search, a compensation package, an onboarding ramp, and a founder's attention pulled away from the product for the better part of a year. All at the exact moment the business could least afford the distraction.
What we did
We looked at who could deliver embedded security leadership at their size, in their regulatory environment, on their timeline. That last constraint eliminated most of the field. We introduced Echelon Risk + Cyber, who structured the engagement as a vCISO-led security team rather than a single fractional hire. The company contracted directly with Echelon. First meeting to signed contract took under 100 days.
The outcome
Executive security leadership in place, a working compliance roadmap, and no internal headcount added. Leadership stayed on the product.
A software company was selling to the federal government. Most security providers were disqualified before the first call.
The situation
FedRAMP requirements narrow the field fast. Plenty of capable MDR providers simply can't operate inside those constraints, and a buyer searching the market has no way to tell which ones from a website. Meanwhile, the company had accumulated the usual sprawl — multiple overlapping security tools, each with its own console, alerts, and renewal date.
What we did
The compliance requirement did most of the filtering. What remained was a much shorter list, and the question became whether any of them could consolidate the existing stack rather than add another layer on top. We introduced a FedRAMP-authorized MDR provider whose technology is agnostic, running on third-party SIEM and EDR rather than requiring a rip-and-replace. A different compliance picture, or a different internal team, and the shortlist looks different.
The outcome
Fewer tools, one team accountable for detection and response, and a security operation that holds up under federal scrutiny while the business keeps growing.
A nonprofit organization planned to double in a year. Their security couldn't.
The situation
Growth was the whole plan, and the security operation wasn't built for it. What they didn't want was equally clear: no vendor lock-in, no handing over control of a stack they'd chosen deliberately and still believed in. They needed capacity, not a replacement.
What we did
Most providers responded by pitching tools. The better questions were operational — could a partner run alongside the team they had, at the scale they were heading toward, without taking the wheel? We introduced Dataprise, who validated the toolset already in place rather than proposing to replace it, and scoped a co-managed engagement: 24/7 help desk, network monitoring, endpoint detection, and full SOC coverage. The organization contracted directly with Dataprise.
The outcome
Security operations that scale with the growth plan, an internal team that kept ownership of its own stack, and coverage around the clock without hiring for it.
Questions people ask before they call
How do you get paid?
Every provider's price already includes their cost of sale. Someone has to find you, quote you, and close you, and that expense is baked in whether it's their own rep, a distributor, or someone like me. Going direct doesn't remove that cost. It just means the provider keeps it, and you negotiate without anyone on your side of the table. I'm paid by whichever provider you choose, out of that existing budget, over the life of the contract. Nothing is added to your price, and I'm never on your paper — you contract directly with them.
Why wouldn't you steer me to whoever pays you the most?
Because I'm paid over time rather than at signing, a bad match costs me more than it pays me. If you leave in year two, so does my compensation. The fee structure is also broadly similar across the network, so there's little to gain by steering and a lot to lose.
Do I have to buy through you?
No. You contract directly with the provider you choose. I'm never on the paper, and you can go around me at any point. Most people don't, because the work isn't the introduction — it's narrowing the field, comparing what's actually being proposed, and staying in it through implementation.
What if I already have a good provider I like?
Keep them. Then make them earn it. The cost of change is real and belongs in the decision, which is exactly why staying should be a choice rather than a default. A side-by-side against current market options doesn't take long, and it sometimes surfaces capabilities your incumbent already had and never mentioned.
How long does this take?
Faster than doing it yourself, but the honest answer is that it depends more on you than on me. If you know what you need, options can be in front of you inside a couple of weeks. If the requirements are still forming, the useful first step is usually a conversation with an engineer rather than a list of vendors. Either way you're not waiting on me to learn the market. There are 18 solution architects and engineers behind this work, with direct lines into the technical teams at the providers. The slow part of sourcing is normally scheduling twenty vendor calls to find out which four are relevant. That part is already done.
How does one person have access to 422 providers?
I source through Telarus, the largest technology services distributor in North America. Their supplier agreements, engineering bench, and benchmark data sit behind every option I bring you. Plenty of people have that access. What you're getting from me is which four of the 422 are actually right for your situation, and someone who stays in it after the contract is signed.
What if I've had a bad experience with someone like you before?
Probably fair. Plenty of people in this business will introduce you to whoever pays them best and disappear after the signature. Three things I'd point to instead of arguing. I'm paid over the life of the contract, so I lose money on a bad match. I'm never on your paper, so you can go around me at any time. And the engagements on this page name the providers and describe what actually happened, which is more than most people in my position are willing to put in writing.
When does your next renewal land?
That's the whole first question. Even "not until March" is a useful answer, and it's the right time to start.