About Data Security Partners
BUILT BY PRACTITIONERS. DELIVERED AS A PARTNER.
Data Security Partners was founded on a simple observation: mid-market businesses face the same security pressures as enterprise organizations — but have none of the same resources to address them.
Businesses between $2M and $10M in annual revenue occupy an uncomfortable position in the security landscape.
They’re large enough to hold sensitive client data, accept credit card payments, and work with enterprise clients who require security assurances. They’re subject to the same regulatory frameworks — HIPAA, PCI-DSS, state privacy laws — as much larger organizations. Their cyber insurers are asking harder questions at every renewal. And their enterprise clients are sending security questionnaires that assume a level of program maturity most mid-market businesses haven’t had reason to develop yet.
At the same time, they’re too small to justify a full-time Chief Information Security Officer and dedicated security staff. Enterprise security consulting firms price them out or adapt frameworks downward in ways that don’t quite fit. Automated tools generate reports without context. And one-time assessments produce findings that sit in a binder rather than driving an active program.
Data Security Partners was built to fill that gap — functioning as your fractional CISO: programs designed from the ground up for businesses your size, at pricing that reflects your budget and reality, delivered by practitioners who understand your world.
“We don’t win by being the biggest firm in the room. We win by knowing your data security obligations — and how to meet them — better than anyone else at the table.“
A 40-year career founding and leading six companies — from startup through enterprise scale — spanning technical leadership, computer forensics investigation, and business education, all pointed toward one outcome: security programs mid-market businesses can actually use.
Data Security Partners was founded by James B. Carter, a Computer Science graduate of Purdue University whose 40-year career has been defined by a single thread: translating between the technical world and the business world, in every context that translation has been needed. That thread began at Purdue, where he paired a CS degree with coursework in Management and Philosophy — a deliberate bet that the most valuable place to stand is at the intersection of both worlds. That instinct has shaped every professional chapter since.
His early work included managing technical services teams and developing and teaching courses in programming languages and operating systems. In the late 1980s, as a technical services manager, he conceived a factory floor communications tool that had to be technically sophisticated underneath and completely simple on the surface. Before it reached the market, the company was acquired by a Fortune 100 corporation — and he became the youngest manager in its history, tasked with convincing far more senior executives, and winning sign-off from marketing, legal, and finance, that an unproven idea was worth finishing and bringing to market. Translating that technical vision into a business case those functions could act on crystallized a principle that would run through everything that followed: complexity underneath is the engineer’s job. Clarity on the surface is everyone’s responsibility.
In the 1990s, his collaboration with a former automobile dealership Controller produced a software product for dealership finance departments — technically complex underneath, explained in plain language to professionals who had no interest in how it worked. The two companies built around this venture each employed more than 25 people within three years and were profitable. The experience reinforced a lesson that shows up directly in the DSP model: technical depth paired with domain credibility and plain-language communication unlocks results that neither partner could achieve alone.
In the mid-2000s, a pattern of informal requests became another business. He built a computer forensics practice, conducting investigations into the misuse of technology and testifying as an expert witness in Circuit and Federal Courts, including a federal RICO case. Testifying before a judge and jury with no technical background, under pressure from opposing counsel, demands precision in the report and plain English in the testimony — not technical “dolphin-speak.” It also means seeing firsthand, in granular detail, what the absence of a documented security program looks like when it is being examined in a federal courtroom.
That firsthand knowledge of consequences drove a deliberate shift: he applied the same investigative discipline, documentation standards, and communication imperative — but prospectively, before the breach rather than after it. A multi-year partnership with corporate attorney Tom Fredericks, undertaken on behalf of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, produced a seminar series helping small and medium-sized business owners — the core of the Chamber’s membership — understand how to safeguard their organizations through sound technology governance. That partnership also produced Manage Employee Electronic Use: Safeguard Your Business, a book the two co-authored, published by Michigan Chamber Services in 2013. Data Security Partners is the culmination of that 40-year thread — built on the recognition that the business owner facing security pressure from clients, insurers, and regulators needs exactly what has always been needed at every intersection of technology and business: someone who understands both worlds, speaks both languages, and can build something that works in both.
“Forensics is like standing by a river, seeing somebody drowning, and pulling them to shore. Cybersecurity is like going upstream and preventing them from falling into the river in the first place.”
That experience shapes everything about how we work:
We speak business, not jargon.
Our engagements are designed for business owners and executives — not IT departments. We view security through a business lens: risk tolerance, ROI, budgets, impact on operations, and contractual obligations. We translate security requirements into business language your stakeholders understand and your clients recognize.
We understand compliance obligations.
PCI-DSS, HIPAA, cyber insurance requirements, and enterprise vendor contracts aren’t abstract frameworks to us. We understand how they apply to businesses your size and what it actually takes to satisfy them.
We’ve built programs, not just reports.
The difference between a security report and a security program is everything. We build programs — living documents and active management processes that improve your security posture over time and give you the documented evidence your stakeholders require.
HOW WE THINK
Due Care. Due Diligence. Reasonable Security.
Every engagement at Data Security Partners is grounded in three principles that reflect the legal and ethical standard your stakeholders actually hold you to.
A note on what
“security” actually requires
Your obligation is not to prevent every security incident. The U.S. Federal Government cannot do that with unlimited resources. Anyone who claims they can guarantee it on your behalf is not being straight with you. What the law, your insurers, and your clients actually require is something more honest and more achievable: documented evidence that you took reasonable, appropriate steps to protect the data entrusted to you.
Due Care
Taking reasonable, documented steps to protect the data entrusted to you. Not perfection — a genuine, defensible effort that a reasonable organization would make given the risks involved. Due Care is demonstrated through action, documentation, and consistency.
Due Diligence
Actively investigating and understanding the risks your organization faces. Not assuming you know your risk profile — verifying it through structured assessment, ongoing monitoring, and regular review. Due Diligence is demonstrated through process — and documentation. What you’ve done matters. What you can prove you’ve done is what protects you.
Reasonable Security
Controls and practices appropriate to your specific environment, data, clients, and risk profile. Not enterprise-level overkill — and not nothing. The standard applied by regulators, insurers, and courts when evaluating your security program. Reasonable Security is demonstrated through fit.
What is “Reasonable Security”
The term appears throughout HIPAA, state data protection statutes, enterprise contracts, and insurance policy conditions — but it is rarely defined concretely. Regulators and courts typically describe it as what is appropriate given the size, nature, and complexity of the organization. That standard is deliberately flexible — and that flexibility cuts both ways.
It means a mid-market business is not held to the same standard as a Fortune 500 enterprise. But it also means the burden of demonstrating reasonableness falls on you. In an enforcement action, a breach lawsuit, or an insurance coverage dispute, “we thought we were doing enough” is not a defense. A documented, active security program is.
These principles have a practical implication: what constitutes reasonable security looks different for every business. That’s why we don’t sell templates — we build programs tailored to your specific environment and risk profile.
WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT
A Program, Not a Project.
A Partner, Not a Vendor.
What most security consultants do:
Conduct an assessment. Produce a report. Hand it over. Move on. You’re left with findings and no ongoing support. The report sits in a binder. The risks remain. The next questionnaire arrives and you’re no better prepared than before.
What Data Security Partners does:
Build your program — and stay to manage it. We don’t measure success by the quality of our report. We measure it by the maturity of your program over time. By the questionnaires you answer confidently. By the cyber insurance renewal you navigate without scrambling. By the enterprise contract you close because your security posture no longer gives their procurement team pause.
Exclusively Mid-Market
We don’t serve enterprise clients on the side. Businesses between $2M and $10M in annual revenue are our entire focus. Our frameworks, our pricing, and our engagement model are built for your world — not adapted from someone else’s.
Grounded in Recognized
Standards and Best Practices
Our programs are built on NIST 800-53 — a comprehensive framework that maps cleanly to CIS Controls, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and NIST 800-171 — assessed using the CIS Controls methodology across all 18 control areas. Your documentation is linked to standards and best practices your stakeholders, insurers, and regulators already recognize and respect.
Built for the Long Term
Most of our engagements are structured as three-year programs because security maturity isn’t built in a month or a quarter. Year 1 establishes your foundation. Year 2 demonstrates measurable improvement. Year 3 proves sustained program maturity.
Transparent by Design
No hidden pricing. No bait-and-switch scope. No jargon designed to make simple things sound complex. We tell you what things cost, what they include, and what they don’t. And we focus on what is realistic — not pie-in-the-sky promises.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT
Four Things We Promise Every Client.
You Always Have a Plan
Every quarter begins with a clear agenda — what we’re assessing, what we’re managing, and what we’re delivering. You’ll never wonder what we’re working on or why.
You Always See Results
Every engagement produces documented results — findings, progress, priorities. Your program is measurable, visible, and always accountable to you.
You’re Never Alone on a Questionnaire
Security questionnaires run in both directions — clients asking about your security posture, and vendors you need to assess on yours. In both cases, we handle it. For inbound questionnaires from clients and enterprise prospects, we respond accurately, professionally, and within your engagement scope. For outbound vendor assessments under the TPRM Program, we build and manage the process. No more scrambling. No more guessing. No more forwarding a generic form and hoping for the best.
Your Program Grows With You
As your business evolves — new clients, new systems, new risks, new regulatory requirements — your program adapts. Annual reassessments recalibrate priorities. Documentation stays current.
“Security is a process,
not an event.”
OUR GOAL
Beyond Compliance. Toward Culture.
Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling.
A security program that exists to satisfy a questionnaire is better than nothing — but it’s not a good strategy. A genuine security program changes how your organization thinks about data, about risk, and about its obligations to the people who trust it with sensitive information.
For our Tier 3 clients, this is an explicit goal. We work directly with department heads and team leaders to develop the Cybersecurity Standardized Operating Procedures their teams OWN. When the person responsible for executing a procedure helped write it, they’re not complying with something handed down from above — they’re executing something THEY built.
We call this a Culture of Security — and it’s the most durable outcome any security program can produce. It survives personnel changes. It outlasts any individual engagement. And it means that when your next client questionnaire arrives, the answer doesn’t come from a consultant — it comes from your organization.
WHY “PARTNERS”?
The Name Is a Promise.
We chose “Data Security Partners” deliberately… Not “Data Security Consultants.”… Not “Data Security Solutions.”… “Partners.”
A consultant gives you advice and leaves. A solutions provider sells you a product. A partner stays. A partner is accountable for outcomes, not just deliverables. A partner tells you when something isn’t working. A partner measures success the same way you do — by the health of your business, not the volume of their output.
That’s the relationship we’re building with every client. Not a vendor relationship. A partnership.
Unlocking Sales.
Building Trust.
Ready to find the right starting point?
The right engagement depends on your situation, your obligations, and where you stand today. Schedule a conversation and we’ll tell you honestly which of our services makes sense — and which doesn’t.