Dedicated Security Team Requirements

Enterprise buyers want to know if you have people whose primary job is keeping customer data safe. They're asking whether security is someone's full-time responsibility or if it's handled as a side task by your engineering team. This helps them gauge how seriously you take security and whether you have the expertise to handle security incidents, stay current with threats, and maintain security standards as you grow.

Having dedicated security staff signals maturity to enterprise buyers and can be the difference between passing or failing a vendor assessment. Companies without dedicated security resources often lose 40-60% of enterprise deals at the security review stage. However, smaller companies can still win by demonstrating strong security leadership, clear ownership, and strategic use of external security advisors or virtual CISO services. The key is showing that security has executive attention and dedicated resources, even if not full-time employees.

Small companies often make the mistake of saying 'no' without context, which can be an immediate red flag. Instead of a binary answer, explain your security ownership model. Another mistake is exaggerating - claiming your DevOps engineer is a 'dedicated security officer' when they spend 10% of their time on security will backfire during deeper diligence.