Item 1. Business
ITEM
1. BUSINESS
Unless
otherwise indicated or the context requires otherwise, the terms “we,” “us,” “our,” and “our
company” refer to Cerberus Cyber Sentinel Corporation, a Delaware corporation, and our wholly owned subsidiaries. Unless otherwise specified, all dollar amounts are expressed in United States dollars.
Our
Business
General
We
are a cybersecurity and compliance company comprised of highly trained and seasoned security professionals who work with clients to enhance
or create a better cyber posture in their organization. Cybersecurity, also known as computer security or information technology security,
is the protection of computer systems and networks from information disclosure, theft of or damage to their hardware, software, or electronic
data, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide. The cybersecurity industry has a supply and demand
issue wherein there is more demand for cybersecurity services than there are expert and seasoned compliance and cybersecurity professionals
available in the market. We seek to identify, attract, and retain highly skilled cyber and compliance teams and bring them together to
provide holistic cyber services. We accomplish this through acquisitions, direct hiring, and incentivizing employees with stock options
to help retain them. On an ongoing basis, we seek to identify cyber talent that is culturally aligned and that offers operating leverage
through both existing customer revenue and relationships. We have invested in enterprise solutions and executive talent to integrate
our different organizations into an ecosystem that works together to provide complete and holistic cybersecurity through cross pollination
of solutions. The ecosystem is intended to provide additional revenue opportunities and drive overall recurring revenue.
We
emphasize to clients the critical nature of having their work force create a continuously aware security culture. Once engaged, we strive
to become the trusted advisors for customers’ cybersecurity and compliance needs by providing tailored security solutions based
upon their organizational needs. We do not focus on selling cybersecurity products; we are product-agnostic so that we can provide solutions
that fit the customer’s security needs, financial realities, and future strategy. Our approach is to evaluate the client’s
organization holistically, identify compliance requirements, and secure the infrastructure while helping to create a culture of security.
We
provide a full range of cybersecurity consulting and related services, encompassing all three pillars of compliance, cybersecurity, and
culture. Our services include compliance services, secured managed services, security operations center (“SOC”) services,
virtual Chief Information Security Officer (“vCISO”) services, incident response, certified forensics, technical assessments,
and cybersecurity training. We believe that culture is the foundation of every successful cybersecurity and compliance program. To deliver
that outcome, we developed our unique offering of MCCP+ (“Managed Compliance & Cybersecurity Provider + Culture”), which
is the only holistic solution that provides all three of these pillars under one roof from a dedicated team of subject matter experts.
In contrast to the majority of cybersecurity firms that are focused on a specific technology or service, we seek to differentiate ourselves
by remaining technology agnostic, focusing on accumulating highly sought-after topic experts. We continually seek to identify and acquire
cybersecurity talent to expand our service scope and geographical coverage to provide the best possible service for our clients. We believe
that bringing together a world-class team of technological experts with multi-faceted expertise in the critical aspects of cybersecurity
is key to providing technology agnostic solutions to our clients in a business environment that has suffered from a chronic lack of highly
skilled professionals, thereby setting us apart from competitors and in-house security teams. Our goal is to create a culture of security
and to help quantify, define, and capture a return on investment from information technology and cybersecurity spending. Our brand rallies
around the battle cry: “Cyber security is a Culture, not a Product.”
Offering
this set of cybersecurity services allows us to capture more revenue with greater efficiency, facilitating greater profitability and
stronger customer retention. The benefit to our customers is that they receive an efficient engagement from a single provider that covers
a wide range of their needs. This means their challenges are addressed more thoroughly and problems are resolved more rapidly when compared
to working with multiple vendors. This leads to the best possible outcome, which enables our customers to commit to us for the long term.
We
believe that our business model is differentiated from other companies in the industry in that our employees are not consultants; they
are dedicated partners available on a recurring monthly contract. Due to the numerous challenges in hiring experienced cybersecurity
and compliance professionals, assimilating our team of industry and subject matter experts into our clients’ teams is the ideal
solution.
We
are technology agnostic. Whereas, most cybersecurity firms are locked into working with a single technology, we seek to differentiate
ourselves by remaining technology agnostic. This approach enables us to work with any business, no matter what systems or tools they
use. For our customers, the benefit is equally valuable as they are able to choose the best tools and technology for their business needs
without affecting their relationship with us.
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We
believe that building a world-class technology team with industry-specific and subject-matter expertise is the key to providing cutting-edge
solutions to our clients. We will continue to identify and acquire cybersecurity talent to expand our scope of services and geographical
footprint to fortify our capability to deliver excellence to our customers. Furthermore, our goal is to stay a step ahead of threat actors
and regulatory obligations to keep our customers safe and compliant.
The
Cybersecurity Challenge
As
the world has become increasingly connected through the Internet and the Internet of Things (“IoT”), cyberattacks have
prevailed and evolved, in different forms, causing uncontainable threats to the integrity and privacy of enterprise and personal
data and resulted in significant economic losses globally. The McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that approximately 127 new
IoT devices connect to the Internet every second. A report published by Cybersecurity Ventures stated that damages from global
cybercrime is predicted to hit $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Cybersecurity Ventures estimated that a business fell victim to a
ransomware attack every 11 seconds in 2021, up from every 14 seconds in 2019. As a result, ransomware is one of the fastest growing
types of cybercrime. Moreover, an Accenture survey reported that 68% of business leaders feel their cybersecurity risks are
increasing. Cybersecurity Ventures has also predicted that worldwide global cybersecurity spending will exceed $1.75 trillion
cumulatively from the fiscal years 2021 to 2025. The New York Times reported that in 2021 there would be 3.5 million unfilled job
openings in the cybersecurity field. Two years later, despite widespread university and government investments into education programs
and recruitment efforts, the rates are roughly the same. Continued efforts to bridge the workforce and skills gaps simply
can’t keep up with the ongoing increase in demand.
In
response to the increasing economic damage caused by heightened cybersecurity risks, regulatory bodies have pushed the
implementation of new cybersecurity legislations, and cyber insurance companies have increased minimum cybersecurity underwriting
requirements, as well as premium costs. We believe that we are well positioned in a fast-growing industry to provide businesses with a wide scope of
cybersecurity services and with significant opportunities for growth.
Service
Offering
We
currently offer two major types of services to clients including security managed services and professional services.
Security
Managed Services
Our security managed services
include cybersecurity and compliance solutions. Through our consultative approach, we evaluate the cybersecurity posture and ecosystem
of our clients to expose risks, optimize resources and implement best-fit solutions that are tailored to the business and address their
unique challenges.
We
offer multiple services in the security managed services portfolio, including the following:
●
Compliance:
Our compliance practice ensures the customers are implementing the right
controls, properly prioritizing risks, and investing in the appropriate remediation in order to comply and adhere to applicable industry
standards and guidelines, and manage continuous monitoring over time. We provide the combination of integrated processes and systems,
experienced staff, and innovative technology to help our customers meet those goals. Our seasoned experts possess the stringent industry
certifications and accreditations that indicate their depth of knowledge in security compliance regulations, frameworks, and controls.
As an authorized Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (“FedRAMP”) vendor, we bring an insider’s perspective
to the process in the following standards:
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○
FedRAMP: provides standardization
to cloud security for Cloud Service Providers.
○
FISMA 2014: codifies the
Department of Homeland Security’s role in administering the implementation of information security policies for federal Executive
Branch civilian agencies, overseeing agencies’ compliance with those policies, and assisting the U.S. Office of Management
and Budget in developing those policies.
○
ISO 17021 and ISO 27001:
international standard providing certification bodies with a set of requirements that will enable them to ensure that their management
system certification process is carried out in a competent, consistent, and impartial manner.
○
Health Insurance Portability
and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) and Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009: laws regulated by the Department
of Health and Human Services to secure the privacy and confidentiality of protected health information.
○
PCI: a standard administered
by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.
○
Cybersecurity Framework:
a set of cybersecurity activities, desired outcomes, and applicable informative references common across critical infrastructure
sectors.
○
The National Institute
of Standards and Technology (“NIST”): formally known as a National Bureau of Standards, NIST is a federal agency that
promotes and maintains measurement standards while encouraging and assisting industry and science to develop and use these standards.
○
Cybersecurity Maturity
Model Certification: intended to serve as a verification mechanism to ensure that defense industrial base companies implement appropriate
cybersecurity practices and processes to protect federal contract information and controlled unclassified information within their
unclassified networks.
○
General Data Protection
Regulation: intended to standardize data protection law across the single market and give people in a growing digital economy greater
control over how their personal information is used.
○
Service Organization 2:
an auditing procedure that focuses on a business’ non- financial reporting controls related to security, availability, processing,
integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of a system.
○
Health Information Trust
Alliance comprehensive security framework: developed in collaboration with healthcare, technology, and information security leaders
to create, access, store, and exchange sensitive and/or regulated data.
●
Secured
Managed Services: Our team has extensive experience in identifying and remediating security
issues in a holistic fashion to quickly affect change on an organizational scale. We partner with our clients to address the items that
are identified through the course of routine network hygiene or from a security review, penetration test, or incident response. Our remediation
services resolve vulnerabilities that may introduce risk and lead to adverse outcomes if not addressed. Examples of issues that we remediate
include rearchitecting computer networks to minimize attack surface, implementing high security password requirements and multi-factor
authentication, applying missing security patches that expose an organization to security attack, or correcting misconfigurations that
can lead to unauthorized access such. Our services provide customers with a mature methodology for the heavy lifting needed to ensure
that implementing solutions to minimize security risk are done efficiently and effectively.
●
SOC
Managed Services: We offer SOC-as-a-service, which is a subscription-based service that provides
24x7x365 coverage and overwatch including threat monitoring, alerting, validation, and proactive threat hunting to defend against cyber
threats.
●
vCISO
Service: Organizations are in need of a cybersecurity program to reduce cyber risk
to the business, but many do not have the capital resources or knowledge base to hire a Chief Information Security Officer to lead the
effort. We offer this to companies on an ongoing managed service basis as a resource to augment their management team. vCISO services
include road mapping the future state for the client and providing our knowledgeable expertise to help them achieve their security needs.
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Professional
Services
Our professional services include
an extensive portfolio of tailored advisory solutions. Our in-depth and uniquely acquired industry expertise allows us to act as a trusted
advisor of our clients to help them lower their risk profile, minimize cost impact, and meet regulatory compliance demands. We specialize
in:
●
Incident
Response and Forensics: We focus on identification, investigation, and remediation of cyberattacks.
●
Technical
Assessments: We specialize in advanced cybersecurity assessments that highlight the
skills and experience of our team’s top-tier talent. Our customers love us because we routinely identify issues that no one else
does due to our emphasis on real-world manual testing techniques and custom exploit development to uncover new avenues of attack. Our
approach to penetration testing services strikes the perfect equilibrium between cost, time, and results. The team of highly skilled testers
utilize the same tools and techniques a malicious cybercriminal would use to try to gain unauthorized access to highly guarded corporate
systems and data to evaluate technical controls and quantify business risks in a meaningful way. This level of analysis provides business
leaders the knowledge required to not only understand the impact a successful attack might have on their business operations, but also
can validate the effectiveness of existing security controls and justify additional security related investment.
●
Training:
We provide security awareness training that can build a cyber vigilant
culture by equipping users with the tools and techniques required to spot a potential cyberattack in the early stages. This targets the
root cause for 75% of cyber breach events by starting with a culture of security-first forward thinking.
●
Other
Cybersecurity Services:
◌
Cyber Vigilance: Bringing the culture of cybersecurity to an organization is a critical first step of building any resilience to cyber threats. Through our consulting service, we dive into both the cultural and technical aspects of cybersecurity within the organization, providing meaningful recommendations to rapidly improve cybersecurity posture. We help our clients build effective policies and best practices, design or enhance a cybersecurity system, and train the executive management team to foster a top-down culture of cybersecurity in order to facilitate diligent implementation of cybersecurity awareness.
◌
Gap
and Risk Assessment: We combine decades of security expertise and in-depth knowledge of how
cyberattackers operate to deliver a thorough security risk gap analysis that identifies real world threats and issues guidance for protection.
We first familiarize ourselves with the customer’s environment, business model, operations, and business drivers to best determine
a customer’s cybersecurity posture in an ever evolving threat landscape. We then use our advanced threat intelligence, data breach
experience, and analytics to accurately assess the customers unique cybersecurity risk based on their “as is” state. We then
operate with a holistic mindset, considering every link in the cybersecurity chain from people, processes, and technology, to determine
their ideal “to be” state, aligned with their business goals, compliance requirements, and risk tolerance. Finally, we collaboratively
devise and develop a strategic cybersecurity plan that takes into account critical priorities to effectively reduce cybersecurity risk
by closing the gap between their “as is” and “to be” states. This comprehensive awareness of internal systems
and policies provides our customers with a clear understanding of their overall risk as well as the strategies and tools they need to
protect their most valuable assets: their data and brand reputation.
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Growth
Strategy
Cybersecurity
service and consulting firms operate on various forms of business models. We do not focus on selling products; we promote a cybersecurity
culture. Our growth strategy focuses on external acquisition and internal scalability to drive that culture within our customers’
organizations. Therefore, our revenue streams mainly come from security managed service and professional service fees. As the cybersecurity
market grows over the years, we continue to see an increasing number of players entering the market with different sets of qualifications.
However, organizations facing cybersecurity issues also usually lack the expertise to identify the right service provider or do not have
the capital resources to hire a qualified CISO. We believe that this is where our growth opportunity lies since the lack of expertise
leads to information asymmetry, which causes additional noise in the cybersecurity marketplace and exposes organizations to greater risks
if found issues are not mitigated with the right group of experts. Furthermore, the industry is in need of highly qualified technology
professionals in the cybersecurity field. A limited pool of talent results in increasing compensation and cost to retain such talent,
which in turn compromises companies’ bottom line profitability and then increases the need to work externally with a partner such
as our company. According to a Cybersecurity Jobs Report released in 2017 by Herjavec Group, unfilled cybersecurity positions were to be
approximately 3.5 million by 2021. It has been our intention to capitalize on this gap as our growth opportunity.
Our
external acquisition strategy targets engineer-owned cybersecurity firms in the top U.S. and international markets with existing revenue
in the range of $2 million to $25 million and profit margin of at least 15% to 25%, although there could be opportunities beyond the
larger end of this range. We expect each acquisition to be strategic and accretive, and we expect to obtain direct access to a pool of
ready-to-deploy and seasoned cybersecurity talent and enhanced access to a larger client base geographically.
Our
internal scalability strategy will focus on exploring and materializing synergies with the acquired targets. With strategic acquisitions,
on the topline, we expect to provide a broadened service offering, which translates into more diverse revenue streams and a larger client
base. We also anticipate that we will be able to broaden our geographical sales coverage and reduce client acquisition costs. We also
intend to synergize best practices across the platform, which will enhance client experience and client loyalty. On the bottom line,
we plan to centralize general and administrative support functions in one location, which will significantly improve net margin for all
the service lines. This will allow our management to focus on sales initiatives and achieve internal operations scalability in a relatively
short period of time. We estimate that with a typical acquisition, we will realize annual savings on centralized operations, generate
additional revenue from upselling to existing clients, and add revenue from new clients. In the long term, we expect to become a pure-play
cybersecurity consolidator in the United States.
Our
Corporate and Acquisition History
We
were formed on March 5, 2019 as a Delaware corporation. Our principal offices are located at 6900 East Camelback Road, Suite 240, Scottsdale,
Arizona 85251.
On October 2, 2019, we filed a registration statement on Form 10-12G with the Securities and Exchange Commission
(“SEC”) to effect registration of our common stock, par value $0.00001 per share, under the Exchange Act. The registration
statement became effective on December 1, 2019.
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We have
substantially expanded our business in recent years through a number of acquisitions. The following table sets for certain information
regarding such acquisitions:
Acquired
Company, Location
Type
of Acquisition
Date
Services
Provided by Acquired Company
GenResults,
LLC (“GenResults”)
Arizona (1)
Stock
April 12, 2019
Cybersecurity services.
VCAB
Six Corporation (“VCAB”)
Texas
Merger
April 12, 2019
N/A (2)
TalaTek,
LLC (“TalaTek”)
Virginia
Merger
October 1, 2019
Integrated risk management services, including risk
assessments, IT audits, cybersecurity services, and managed compliance services.
Technologyville,
Inc.
Illinois
Stock
May 25, 2020
Managed IT services.
Clear
Skies Security, LLC
Georgia
Stock
August 1, 2020
Security assessment and penetration testing.
Alpine
Security, LLC
Missouri
Merger
December 16, 2020
Integrated risk management services.
Catapult
Acquisition Corporation (“VelocIT”)
New
Jersey
Merger
August 12, 2021
Integrated risk management services.
Atlantic
Technology Systems, Inc., and
Atlantic
Technology Enterprises, Inc. (collectively, “Atlantic”)
New
Jersey
Stock
October 1, 2021
Integrated risk management services.
RED74
LLC (“RED74”)
New
Jersey
Merger
November 9, 2021
Integrated risk management services.
Ocean
Point Equities, Inc. (“Arkavia”)
Santiago,
Chile
Stock
December 1, 2021
Cybersecurity services.
True
Digital Security, Inc. (“True Digital”)
New
York
Florida
Oklahoma
Stock
January 19, 2022
Cybersecurity and compliance.
Creatrix,
Inc.
Tennessee
Maryland
Stock
June 1, 2022
Identity management, systems integration and software
engineering, biometrics, vetting, credentialing, and case management.
CyberViking,
LLC
Georgia
Oregon
Stock
July 1, 2022
Application security services, incident response, threat
hunting, and creation and management of security operation centers.
Servicios
Informaticos CUATROi, S.P.A.,
Comercializadora
CUATROi S.P.A.,
CUATROi
Peru, S.A.C., and
CUATROi
S.A.S.
Santiago,
Chile
Bogota,
Columbia, and Lima, Peru
Stock
August 25, 2022
Managed services and cybersecurity.
NLT
Networks, S.P.A.,
NLT
Technologias, Limitada,
NLT
Servicios Profesionales, S.P.A., and
White
and Blue Solutions, LLC
Providencia,
Chile
Florida
Stock
September 1, 2022
Security solutions and managed services.
RAN
Security
Buenos
Aires, Argentina
Chile,
Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay
Stock
Expected 2023 (3)
Secured managed services.
(1) Prior
to our acquisition of GenResults, GenResults was wholly owned by an entity affiliated with
David G. Jemmett, our Chief Executive Officer and a director of our company. Due to the companies
being under common control, we accounted for the acquisition as a reorganization.
(2) At
the time of the VCAB Merger, VCAB was subject to a bankruptcy proceeding and had minimal
assets, no equity owners, and no liabilities, except for approximately 1,500 holders of Class
5 Allowed General Unsecured Claims and a holder of allowed administrative expenses (collectively
the “Claim Holders”). Pursuant to the terms of the VCAB Merger, and in accordance
with the bankruptcy plan, we issued an aggregate of 2,000,000 shares of our common stock
(the “Plan Shares”) to the Claim Holders as full settlement and satisfaction
of their respective claims. As provided in the bankruptcy plan, the Plan Shares were issued
pursuant to Section 1145 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. We entered into the VCAB Merger
to increase our stockholder base to, among other things, assist us in satisfying the listing
standards of a national securities exchange.
(3) On
January10, 2023, we entered into a definitive agreement for the acquisition of RAN Security, which is expected
to close later in the year, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including applicable
regulatory approvals.
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Customers
Our
recent acquisitions have resulted in expansion of our customer base and increased usage within existing customers. None of our customers
individually accounted for more than 10.0% of our consolidated revenue for the year ended December 31, 2022, nor are we dependent upon
a few major customers. One of our customers accounted for an aggregate of 20.4% of our consolidated revenue for the year ended December
31, 2021.
Competition
The
cybersecurity market is highly fragmented. In the top quartile, the market is dominated by several major global players, including IBM
Corporation, Cisco Systems, AVG Technologies, Broadcom, and Dell. The rest of the market is highly competitive without dominant players.
According to MarketsandMarkets.com, North America is expected to continue its hold as the largest market size in the cybersecurity market
through the year 2023. A report from Statista forecasted the cybersecurity market to grow to $345.4 billion by 2026. An increasing awareness
of cyber threats has led to a rising investment in cybersecurity infrastructure worldwide.
We
face direct competition from all small-to-medium-sized cybersecurity service providers nationwide given the broad service scope we currently
provide. Many competitors provide cloud-based services, which means our competition is not restricted by regions. It is critical for
our executive management team to identify and attract strategic acquisition targets in order to strengthen our competitive advantage
as a cybersecurity consolidator, which we believe brings higher service quality, more diverse service scope, and broader geographical
coverage at a lower cost.
Intellectual
Property
We
intend to take appropriate steps to protect our intellectual property. We have registered the trademark “Cyber security is a culture,
not a product,” which has been approved with a registration date of October 29, 2019.
We
have non-disclosure, confidentiality, and license agreements with employees, contractors, customers and other third parties, which limit
access to and use of our proprietary information. Though we rely in part upon these legal and contractual protections, as well as various
procedural safeguards, we believe the skill and ingenuity of our employees, and the functionality and frequent enhancements to our solutions
are more important to maintaining our competitive position in the marketplace.
Government
Regulation
We
are not aware of any specific regulations that govern cybersecurity firms or the areas in which we operate. While there are a few federal
cybersecurity regulations, they govern industries that we serve and exist to focus on specific industries.
Three
of the main cybersecurity regulations are HIPAA, the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the 2002 Homeland Security Act, which included
the Federal Information Security Management Act (“FISMA”). The three regulations mandate that healthcare organizations, financial
institutions, and federal agencies, respectively, should protect their systems and information. FISMA, which applies to every government
agency, requires the development and implementation of mandatory policies, principles, standards, and guidelines on information security.
However, the regulations do not address numerous computer related industries, such as Internet Service Providers and software companies.
Furthermore, the regulations do not specify what cybersecurity measures must be implemented and require only a “reasonable”
level of security.
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In
addition, the National Cybersecurity Division is another regulatory body that is a division of the Office of Cybersecurity & Communications
within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Human
Capital Management
We
believe that our future success will depend, in part, on our continued ability to attract, hire, and retain qualified personnel. In particular,
we depend on the skills, experience, and performance of our senior management and engineering and technical personnel. We compete for
qualified personnel with other cyber security companies and industry experts.
We
provide competitive compensation and benefits programs to help meet the needs of our employees. In addition to salaries, these programs
(which vary by country/region and employment classification) include incentive compensation plan, pension, healthcare and insurance benefits,
paid time off, family leave, and on-site services, among others. We also use targeted equity-based grants with vesting conditions to
facilitate retention of personnel, particularly for our key employees.
The
success of our business is fundamentally connected to the well-being of our people. Accordingly, we are committed to the health and safety
of our employees. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented significant changes that we determined were in the best interest
of our employees, as well as the communities in which we operate, and which comply with government regulations. This includes having
employees work from home, while implementing additional safety measures for employees continuing critical on-site work.
Environmental,
Social, and Governance Efforts
Environmental
Commitment
We
are committed to protecting the environment and attempt to mitigate any negative impact of our operations. We monitor resource use, improve
efficiency, and at the same time reduce our emissions and waste.
Social
Responsibility
We
are a trusted cybersecurity expert providing safe, efficient, and sustainable services to our existing and new communities. Our success
is the direct result of the dedication and strength of our team and promotes equity, diversity, integrity, inclusion, reliability and
accountability. We believe that a combination of diverse team members and an inclusive culture contributes to our success. Each member
is a valued part of our team bringing a diverse perspective to help grow business and achieve our goals. Our tradition of serving employees,
customers, and investors is at the core of our culture. For third-party vendor selection and oversight, we have standard operating procedures
that apply to employees and subcontractors who, on our behalf, oversee and conduct technical protocols.
Employees
As
of December 31, 2022, we had 449 employees, of which 443 were full-time. In addition, we utilize independent contractors for projects
of short duration or where specialized knowledge or experience is needed for a complex project. We are not dependent on any independent
contractor, and we believe adequate replacements would be available in the event any such independent contractor becomes unavailable
to us. We believe our relations with our employees is good.
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Available
Information
Our
Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, our proxy and information statements and all
amendments to those reports will be available free of charge through our website at www.ciso.inc as soon as practicable after such material
is electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Except as otherwise stated in these documents, the information contained on our
website or available by hyperlink from our website is not incorporated by reference into this report or any other documents we file,
with or furnish to, the SEC.
Implications
of Being an Emerging Growth Company
We
qualify as an “emerging growth company” as the term is used in The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS
Act”), and therefore, we may take advantage of certain exemptions from various public company reporting requirements, including:
●
a
requirement to only have two years of audited financial statements and only two years of related selected financial data and management’s
discussion and analysis;
●
exemption
from the auditor attestation requirement on the effectiveness of our internal controls over financial reporting;
●
reduced
disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation; and
●
exemptions
from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory stockholder vote on executive compensation and any golden parachute payments.
We
may take advantage of these provisions for up to five years or such earlier time that we are no longer an emerging growth company. We
would cease to be an emerging growth company if we have more than $1.07 billion in annual revenue, issue more than $1.0 billion of non-convertible
debt over a three-year period, or become a large accelerated filer. So long as we remain an emerging growth company, we may choose to
take advantage of some, but not all, of the available benefits of the JOBS Act. We have taken advantage of some of the reduced reporting
requirements in our filings. Accordingly, the information contained herein may be different than the information you receive from other
public companies in which you hold stock. In addition, the JOBS Act provides that an emerging growth company can delay adopting new or
revised accounting standards until such time as those standards apply to private companies. We have elected to avail ourselves of this
exemption from new or revised accounting standards and, therefore, we will not be subject to the same new or revised accounting standards
as other public companies that are not emerging growth companies.