Member Spotlight: Aetos One

Member Spotlight by [Aetos One]

Provide us with a brief summary of your business’ services

Aetos One delivers managed cybersecurity services built for organizations that cannot afford a full-time security executive but cannot afford to skip security either. Co-founded by two Central Ohio cybersecurity leaders, Jerod Brennen and Robert Vaile, Aetos One’s mission is to simplify cybersecurity, enabling small and mid-market businesses to find business resilience without unnecessary complexity or overhead. Our services break into three modules. Guardian gives clients fractional CISO and data privacy leadership. Bastion covers managed security operations. Citadel handles audit preparation and compliance readiness. Clients choose the modules that match their stage and risk profile.

Describe your company in three words

Cooperative. Accessible. Business-Minded.

Share a recent project, client success, or example of your work in action.

One of our clients came to us running a patchwork of vendors and point solutions. Each one solved a piece of the problem, but none of them talked to each other. That’s expensive, and it’s hard to get a clear picture of your actual risk when your security stack looks like that.

We consolidated their vendors into one tightly integrated program under our Bastion module, which also brought quarterly penetration testing into their regular cadence instead of treating it as a one-off. The result: better security for less cost, and for the first time, a clear, ongoing view of where their real risk sits. That’s the whole point. Understand how the business runs, then build security around it, not the other way around.

How do you stay engaged with trends that you see in your industry?

Jerod has spent 25 years in this field, supporting clients in a wide variety of industries. That range keeps him close to how different industries actually experience risk, not just how vendors describe it. He also teaches cybersecurity courses online and in person, and is a regular speaker at events and industry conferences. Robert has spent 30 years in the field, and he holds CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, and a JD. Between them they track the technical, legal, and regulatory sides of the field as they shift.

If you had to start over from scratch, what’s the first thing you’d do differently?

We’d lead with simplicity from day one. It’s easy to fall into the ivory tower trap in this field, where you talk in acronyms and frameworks before you understand what the client actually does. We’d start every engagement the way we do now: learn the business process first, then figure out how security fits into it. If you get that order right, the technical work gets easier and we build meaningful relationships even faster.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received as a business owner?

Security is a business discipline, not a technology problem. Leaders don’t need more acronyms. They need clear decisions they can act on, decisions that start by understanding your business processes and not by applying a generic security framework or regulation.

What makes a successful partnership at your company?

Trust and clarity. Our clients bring us into rooms where the stakes are real, tackling challenges like financial exams, M&A due diligence, and DoD contract requirements. A successful partnership means we tell clients the truth about their risk, we never inflate a problem to sell a service, and we stay in their corner through the audit or the deal, not just through the sales call.

What makes Columbus such a great place to do business?

Columbus has a security community that shares instead of competes. ISSA, ISACA, (ISC)2, OWASP, the broader Ohio conference circuit… these events build relationships you can call on when a client has a real problem. The city also sits close to manufacturers, banks, defense contractors, and technology startups, which happens to match our client base well.

What do you want people to remember about your business five years from now?

That we made cybersecurity make simple and easy to understand, not scarier or more complicated. Just clear enough that a business leader could make meaningful, well-informed decisions on how effective cybersecurity enables business growth.

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aetos-one-cyber/
Website: https://aetosone.com/