Engagements
What the Ledger cannot tell you, an engagement can.
The free Ledger gives you a rough number and the published evidence. An engagement gives you a number you can defend, the evidence applied to your own budget, and a plan for where the next prevention dollars should go.
Three ways to work together
What you receive.
Each engagement is described by what is on your desk when it ends. Laurie Lane-Zucker leads every engagement, and the engagement letter names everyone who works on it.
Eight weeks
The Defense Audit
Why is the institution increasingly vulnerable despite everything it already spends?
You receive
- A Prevention Ratio™ baseline, with the budgets and years it covers stated up front and every classification decision written down
- A Five Pillars assessment of the foundations your security rests on
- A Prevention Dividend™ analysis: what prevention could return in each field, in ranges, each figure labeled with its kind and source
- A plan for where the first dollars moved to prevention should go
- An executive presentation to leadership or the board
Best for institutions that suspect they spend too much after harm is done and want the facts before the debate.
Twelve to sixteen weeks
The Resilience Blueprint
Where should the next prevention dollars go, and how will they be paid for?
You receive
- A set of prevention investments, each chosen because it strengthens more than one pillar
- Ways to pay for them, from shifting budgets to blended finance
- A plan for carrying it out, showing what depends on what
- A plan for keeping the people who must agree on board through the next budget cycle
Best for institutions that have decided to act and need the investments, the money, and the allies.
Continuing
Advisory
Is our spending shifting the way we planned?
You receive
- A quarterly review of how your spending is shifting
- Advice on the decisions the plan did not anticipate
- An advisor who already knows your budget
Follows an audit or a blueprint, and is not offered on its own.
How it begins
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them.
- Thirty minutes
A conversation
What your institution spends, how much of it goes to prevention, and whether an audit is the right next step.
- Before any work
A scope
Which budgets count, how many years we look at, and the question we are answering, all agreed in writing before anything begins.
- Eight weeks
The audit
Your spending added up across departments, your ratio, what prevention could return in ranges, and a plan presented to leadership or the board.
- When you are ready
What follows
A blueprint, a standing advisory relationship, or nothing more. An audit is complete on its own.
How we work
What you can hold us to.
Ranges
We give every Prevention Dividend figure as a range, low to high, and say how confident the evidence is. We say which returns were measured after the fact and which come from models. We don’t turn an estimate into a promise.
Kinds of numbers
A benefit–cost ratio, a rate of return, and an estimate of losses avoided answer different questions. We label each figure with its kind and its source, and we don’t convert one kind into another to get a better-looking number.
Your data
What you share stays inside your engagement. If we build a benchmark later, it will use only verified data that institutions have agreed to contribute.
Independence
We don’t sell, broker, or take fees from any infrastructure, insurance, or service we recommend. If an engagement or a recommendation involves a firm connected to one of our advisors, we tell you in writing first.
How we use AI
We use current tools, including AI, and every proposal says where. A named practitioner reviews and signs every figure and every recommendation.
Later, a benchmark. Once enough verified data exists, we intend to publish a benchmark with its rules stated, so that a ratio means the same thing from one institution to the next.
Questions
Questions worth asking first.
Is Defense as a Service™ a defense contractor or a cybersecurity firm?
Neither. Defense here has its oldest meaning: keeping people and places from harm. We look at how institutions spend to protect themselves and help them move more of that spending to prevention. We build no weapons and sell no security products.
Can we start with the Prevention Ledger?
Yes. The Ledger is free and runs in your browser, and a quick estimate takes two totals. Bring the number to a first conversation, or keep it to yourself.
What does an audit need from us?
Spending records for the budgets you choose to include, a sponsor with authority over them, and time with the people who spend the money. What you share stays inside the engagement and never goes into a public dataset.
How is this different from a resilience plan or an ESG assessment?
A resilience plan asks how to protect against the next threat. An ESG assessment asks how a company scores against a framework. The audit asks why an institution is increasingly vulnerable despite what it already spends, and answers from its own ledger.
What does it cost?
Fees depend on how many budgets are included and on the question we are answering, and are agreed in writing before any work begins. The first conversation costs nothing.
A first conversation is a diagnostic, and it costs nothing.
Laurie Lane-Zucker answers every request personally.