A Security Program That Understands Crush, Wine Club Data, and the Tasting Room Floor.
Cybersecurity is one part of a winery's risk surface. Most cyber firms can't credibly help with vendor wire fraud on grape and barrel contracts, wine club member data, tasting room and cellar physical security, or what happens when your POS and DTC platform go down during harvest.
$2,500–$7,500/month · same band as vCISO
Wineries Carry an Unusual Risk Profile.
Your IP isn't just data. It's proprietary blends, vineyard data, and a brand built over decades that a single incident can damage.
Your financial workflow runs on high-dollar seasonal invoices — grapes, barrels, glass, freight — that wire fraud actors target every harvest.
Your property is full of physical risk: a public tasting room, events that serve alcohol, a cellar and warehouse holding the entire vintage, and seasonal staff who turn over every year.
Your business depends on a handful of platforms — Commerce7, your POS, ShipCompliant, reservations — that, if compromised during crush, stop DTC revenue and compliance at the worst possible moment.
Most security firms run a cyber-only playbook. We don't.
Seven ESRM Domains. One Program.
Seven of the thirteen ESRM domains apply directly to how wineries operate. We run them as one continuous program — not seven separate vendor relationships.
Information Security & IP Protection
Wine club and DTC customer data classification, proprietary blend and vineyard-data handling, access control for production and lab records, third-party data-sharing protocols with your platform vendors.
Cybersecurity
Commerce7 / POS / ShipCompliant environment hardening, ransomware preparedness for production and DTC systems, MFA across all staff, endpoint EDR, M365 Conditional Access.
Fraud Risk Mitigation
Wire fraud prevention on grape, barrel, glass, and freight invoices (BEC is the #1 financial threat to small wineries), vendor impersonation detection, seasonal-surge payment controls.
Physical Security
Tasting room access, event security where alcohol is served, cellar and warehouse controls protecting the vintage, after-hours access, and discipline around seasonal-staff keys and logins.
Business Continuity
What happens when the POS is down on a Saturday in peak season. When the DTC platform fails mid-club-run. When the on-prem production server dies the week of bottling.
Brand & Client Protection
Member confidentiality for collectors and allocation lists, media response if a breach or incident leaks, and principal-level reputation protection for a name that is the brand.
Workplace Violence Prevention
Seasonal and event staff turnover, public-facing tasting room incidents, alcohol-service escalation, and safe handling of terminated employees who held system or facility access.
You Probably Need a vCSO If:
- A wholesale buyer, distributor, or insurer asked about your security posture and you couldn't credibly respond.
- A supplier invoice was paid into the wrong account in the last 18 months. (Classic BEC.)
- Your wine club and production data live on a single server with manual backups you've never tested.
- You don't have a written policy for how customer data leaves your DTC platform or who can export it.
- Seasonal accounts from last harvest are still active.
- A POS or platform outage during peak season was handled with "we'll deal with it Monday."
- A collector or allocation client expects a level of data protection you're not sure you actually meet.
What an Engagement Actually Produces.
Within 90 days:
- Documented information security program with a named program owner
- Wine club / DTC data classification, access control, and export policy
- Wire fraud prevention procedures for grape, barrel, and freight payments with named bank-verification steps
- Cyber-insurance renewal posture that survives carrier questionnaires
- Incident response plan tested against ransomware (POS / production environments) and wire fraud scenarios
- Vendor risk program covering Commerce7, ShipCompliant, fulfillment, and reservations
- Tasting room, cellar, and event physical security review with access-control recommendations
- Backup verification specifically for wine club exports and production records — not just servers
- CCPA readiness program (risk assessment and cybersecurity-audit posture for the 2026 regulations)
- Quarterly owners' (or board) risk briefing
We've Yet to Meet a Cyber-Only vCISO Who Can Answer All Four.
Ask any virtual CISO four questions:
What's your process for preventing wire fraud on a six-figure grape contract?
How do you protect and control access to a wine club member list?
What does tasting room and event physical security look like when alcohol is served?
What's your continuity plan when the POS and DTC platform are down during crush?
Wineries don't have CISOs. They have owners and GMs.
The role you actually need is a Chief Security Officer who understands the whole risk surface — cyber, physical, fraud, continuity, IP, brand. Texas DPS-licensed (C10504801, F26294001). CPP, CISSP, CISM credentialed. Operating since 2013.
That's a vCSO. That's what we do.
Schedule a 30-Minute Risk Discussion.
No deck. No sales pitch. If a vCSO program isn't right for your winery, we'll say so on the call.
Schedule a Risk Discussion →