Full Ransomware Recovery During a Blizzard
A 100-bed critical access hospital was hit by ransomware that infected 140 workstations. The recovery team still restored every system, with no data loss, as described in the case study.
Read the case studyvCIO
IT Consulting & vCIO Services
A technology roadmap and a named advisor, without the overhead of a full-time CIO.
IT consulting and vCIO services give growing regulated organizations a technology roadmap, vendor oversight, and board-level reporting without hiring a full-time CIO. A virtual CIO helps leadership decide what to fund, what to retire, and how technology should support the next stretch of the business. We work with healthcare, defense, financial, and legal organizations that need a clear plan, not a pile of uncoordinated projects, and we work alongside vCISO and managed IT teams so strategy and operations stay aligned.
What our IT consulting and vCIO services include
This is leadership and planning work. Day-to-day support, security operations, and infrastructure management sit on their own service pages and are meant to follow the plan.
Technology roadmap
A written plan that ties systems, upgrades, and projects to business goals, so spending has a sequence and a reason.
Budget alignment
Help setting priorities and a budget that leadership can defend, including what can wait and what should not.
Vendor management
Oversight of technology vendors so contracts, renewals, and performance stay visible, and so you are not left coordinating a dozen relationships alone.
Executive reporting
Board-level and leadership reporting on risk, projects, and the state of IT, written for decision makers rather than as a technical status dump.
How this works with our other services
vCIO work is most useful when it is connected to security leadership and to the teams that run the environment.
Alongside vCISO services
Technology planning and security program ownership should not compete. Our vCIO and vCISO services are designed to work together when you need both.
Tied to managed IT
The roadmap is only useful if operations can follow it. Help desk, backup, network, and cloud services on this site are the delivery side of that plan.
Who this is for
These IT consulting and vCIO services are built for regulated organizations that have outgrown informal IT decision making. If that sounds like your industry, start here:
Case studies
These pages show how NorthStar has helped regulated organizations through serious operational and compliance work, and how the firm is led.
Related services
Frequently Asked Questions
About the author
Ken Satkunam, CISM
President & Founder, NorthStar Technology Group
Ken has spent over 25 years in IT leadership, serving in roles from technical support to CIO for organizations as large as 23,000 employees. He founded NorthStar Technology Group in 2000 to help regulated organizations build secure, compliant, and operationally resilient technology environments. Ken holds the Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) credential from ISACA and is the co-author of the Amazon best-seller "Cyber Attack Prevention." He has been quoted in industry publications including eWeek and DM News, and NorthStar has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 list in both 2024 and 2025.
CISMInc. 5000MSP 500Published Author25+ Years
Talk through a technology roadmap with a vCIO
Tell us where planning has been informal, where vendors have piled up, or where the next 12 months are unclear. We can talk through whether fractional CIO leadership is the right fit.