Last updated: October 21, 2026
A three-month contract security remediation squad of two mid-level security engineers, a mid-level systems engineer and a mid-level project manager costs about $189,700 at national index medians. Security engineers bill $90 to $116 an hour. KORE1’s own security placements bill a median $82 (n=7). Both figures come from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026, billed hourly at 40 hours a week.
Cybersecurity contractor cost usually gets quoted one person at a time. That’s the wrong unit. Nobody closes forty open audit findings with a single engineer. It takes a small team with a security lead, somebody who can change the servers, and a person who keeps every item tied to evidence and a date, because an auditor won’t accept “fixed” without proof that it’s fixed.
So this page prices teams. Three of them. A 90-day remediation squad, round-the-clock SOC coverage, and an audit-prep sprint, each built seat by seat from the KORE1 Contract Rate Index, with the metro swings and the arithmetic inside a bill rate laid out where you can check them. Hiring one person instead? Our guide to the cost to hire a cybersecurity engineer covers that. This is the other budget, the one behind a cybersecurity staff augmentation engagement.
Our interest is plain. KORE1 places contract security talent, and we get paid when you bring someone on, so read the index figures as medians and ranges, not a quote, and I’ll say plainly where a different route makes more sense.
What Breaks If the Remediation Does Not Finish?
Devin Hornick, a Partner at KORE1, opens every funded-project conversation with one question. “What breaks if the company doesn’t spend the money or finish the project?” In security, the answer shows up on a calendar somebody else controls.
Three clocks, usually. The auditor’s retest date comes first, and a finding that’s still open at the retest tends to read worse than it did the first time, since by then you’ve had a full year to fix it. The cyber insurance renewal is next, where the questionnaire asks what you fixed since last year and the carrier gets to price the answer. Then there’s your biggest customer’s annual security review, which doesn’t care that your backlog is long.
One date is already fixed. Microsoft’s lifecycle page lists the end of extended support for Windows Server 2016 as January 12, 2027, and after that those servers stop receiving regular security updates. Any assessor who reads your asset inventory will find them. It takes minutes. Two servers or two hundred, that’s a finding with a deadline stamped on it.
Picture a 400-person software company that closed its last audit with 38 open findings, 11 of them rated high. Illustration, not a client. The two-person security team is on call, running incidents and answering customer questionnaires between alerts, so the fix list that would actually move the audit score gets whatever hours are left on a Friday afternoon. The fix list is dull. Identity cleanup, patch cadence, log retention, a handful of policies nobody wrote down. Three months of work for four people, or eighteen months of work for two people who are also on call.
That’s the real trade. Remediation isn’t hard. It’s just a lot, and it has a date.
What Does a 90-Day Remediation Squad Cost?
A contract security remediation squad is a small, time-boxed team hired to close a defined list of open findings. It usually pairs two security engineers with a systems engineer who can change the infrastructure and a project manager who ties every fix to evidence. The squad works the list, hands over the documentation, and leaves.
Four seats, all mid-level, all billed hourly at 40 hours a week. National medians.
| Seat | Level | Bill rate range | Median | 3 months | 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security engineer, two seats | Mid | $90 to $116 | $102 | $106,600 ($53,300 each) | $213,200 |
| Systems engineer | Mid | $70 to $90 | $79 | $40,900 | $81,800 |
| Project manager | Mid | $72 to $93 | $81 | $42,200 | $84,400 |
| Squad of four | $189,700 | $379,400 |
Source: KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026. Modeled from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) for Information Security Analysts (15-1212), Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244) and Project Management Specialists (13-1082), plus a 24% employer burden and KORE1’s observed bill-to-cost bands. Three-month cost assumes 520 hours.
Add it up and the squad runs $189,700 for three months, $379,400 for six. The two security seats are $106,600 of that, a little over half.
The systems engineer is the seat buyers cut first and regret. A security engineer writes the fix. Somebody still has to apply it to the domain controllers, the hypervisors, the backup jobs and the firewall rules, and that’s systems work at a $79 median that otherwise lands on your security engineers at $102 an hour. Expensive way to patch.
Billing is hourly. The clock matters more than the headline. One week of this squad is about $14,600, which is the three-month figure spread across 13 weeks, and if the findings close in ten weeks you pay for ten, not thirteen. The median ended IT assignment at KORE1 lasted 136 days (n=410), so a 90-day contract isn’t an unusual shape.
One more comparison. KORE1’s own security placements (n=7, started 2023 to 2026, mostly Southern California) bill $70 to $124 an hour, median $82, well under the modeled mid-level $102. That’s seven placements across every level. Thin. I wouldn’t lean on a twenty-dollar gap in either direction. If your work is mid-level or above and your team sits outside Southern California, budget to the modeled range.
If a squad is the shape you need, our cybersecurity remediation staffing page covers how we build one.
What Does SOC Augmentation Take in Seats and Dollars?
SOC here means security operations center, the room (or the Slack channel) where somebody watches alerts. It has nothing to do with a SOC 2 report, which comes up in the next section, and mixing the two is the most common confusion on a first call.
Start with the hours. A 24×7 SOC runs 168 hours a week. One full-time seat covers 40. Four seats cover 160, which is eight hours short before anybody gets sick, takes a vacation or needs a handoff overlap. Somebody always does. Five seats put 200 paid hours against 168 of coverage, which leaves 32 hours a week for all of that. Five is the working number. Four works only if an existing employee covers the gap or you pay overtime, and the index doesn’t price overtime.
Level changes the answer more than headcount does. Tier-one triage is junior work, and the index’s junior security cell bills $71 to $90 an hour, median $78, which is $40,400 per seat for three months. Five of those seats cost $202,000 for the quarter. Swap one of the five for a mid-level shift lead at $53,300 and the team costs $214,900. Run five mid-level analysts and it’s $266,500.
Nights and weekends can carry a shift premium that the index doesn’t price, so ask any quote to show it as its own line. Ask about the tools, too. The Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel license and the EDR agents on your endpoints are probably bought already. What’s missing is hands on the queue, and that’s the part you’re pricing here.
When is this the wrong buy? When you need a SOC that exists permanently, with its own runbooks, detections and on-call culture. Contract seats fill a gap or bridge a hiring plan. They don’t replace the plan. If the gap is permanent, start the direct-hire search at the same time, and our SOC analyst staffing team can run both.
What Does an Audit-Prep Sprint Cost?
The audit sprint is the shortest of the three, and the cheapest if you scope it honestly. Two seats. A senior security engineer who can sit across from the auditor and defend the controls, and a mid-level project manager whose whole job is chasing evidence. Senior security bills $113 to $136 an hour, median $126, or $65,400 for three months. Add the project manager at $42,200 and the pair costs $107,600 for the quarter.
Most sprints don’t run a full quarter. At the same hourly cost, eight weeks is about $66,200 and six weeks about $49,700, because the three-month figure is 520 hours and you only pay for the hours worked.
Why the project manager? Half of audit prep is asking engineers for screenshots. Engineers are bad at answering. Somebody has to keep the evidence tracker, chase the owner of each control, and tell you on Thursday that you’re going to miss Friday. For a SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 audit, a HIPAA security review or a PCI DSS assessment, that person earns more than a second engineer would, since the bottleneck is almost never technical skill. Our SOC 2 readiness staffing page and our piece on SOC 2 for engineering leaders go further into the SOC 2 side of it.
The Three Budgets Side by Side
Same index, same hourly basis, three different problems.
| Engagement type | Seats | Index cells (U.S. national) | 3 months | 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 90-day remediation squad | 4: two security engineers, one systems engineer, one project manager, all mid-level | Security mid, systems administrator mid, project manager mid | $189,700 | $379,400 |
| 24×7 SOC, entry-level analysts | 5 junior security analysts | Security junior | $202,000 | $403,500 |
| 24×7 SOC with a shift lead | 5: four junior analysts and one mid-level lead | Security junior, security mid | $214,900 | $429,400 |
| Audit-prep sprint | 2: one senior security engineer, one project manager | Security senior, project manager mid | $107,600 | $215,200 |
Source: KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026. Each total is the sum of the per-seat three-month and six-month cells at 40 hours a week. Modeled cells, 24% employer burden, bill rates only. Overtime, shift premiums and expenses are not included.
Price your remediation squad. Send the engagement type, number of seats, metro, start date and length, and we’ll price the team against the index. Get a bill rate quote for the team. For bill rates by role beyond security, the 2026 contract staffing rate card lists the full set.
How Much Does the Metro Change the Budget?
A lot, for security. The national median for a mid-level security engineer is $102 an hour. In the Bay Area it’s $125. These metro cells come from BLS pay in each area plus the 24% burden, so they’re modeled, not observed.
| Metro (mid-level security engineer) | Bill rate range | Median | One seat, 3 months | Squad, both security seats local |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States (national) | $90 to $116 | $102 | $53,300 | $189,700 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth, TX | $94 to $117 | $106 | $55,100 | $193,300 |
| New York, NY | $98 to $124 | $111 | $57,500 | $198,100 |
| Washington, DC | $105 to $125 | $116 | $60,200 | $203,500 |
| San Francisco Bay Area, CA | $107 to $140 | $125 | $64,900 | $212,900 |
Source: KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026, modeled from BLS OEWS May 2025 metro wages. The squad column swaps the two security seats to the local cell and holds the systems engineer and project manager at national medians.
Swap the two security seats to Bay Area pricing and the quarter goes from $189,700 to $212,900, a $23,200 difference before anybody has started, and it’s the number most likely to surprise a budget that assumed national medians. Washington, DC adds $13,800. Dallas-Fort Worth is the mild one. $3,600 over national.
The audit sprint moves less because it has only one security seat. Price the senior seat in Washington, DC ($123 to $143, median $133, $69,000 for three months) and the pair comes to $111,200, up $3,600.
I held the systems engineer and project manager at national medians so the security effect stays visible, but they move by metro too, so treat the Bay Area and New York totals as slightly light. Our IT contractor rates by city page has the wider list of 22 metros.
What Is Inside a Contract Bill Rate?
Devin walks buyers through the arithmetic with a round number so nobody has to squint. Say a contractor is paid $100 an hour. Employer burden on that pay runs 24%, which makes the loaded cost $124 an hour before the staffing firm has earned anything for finding the person, managing the account or carrying the risk. A bill rate on that pay would likely land around $150 to $160.
It’s a teaching number. Not a security rate. A $100 pay rate belongs to a specialist well above the $102 median bill rate in the tables above, so don’t read it as the market.
What sits inside the 24%? Employer payroll taxes first. IRS Publication 15 for 2026 puts the employer Social Security share at 6.2% on wages up to $184,500, and Medicare at 1.45% with no cap. Then federal and state unemployment taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance and state-mandated paid sick leave. Our contractor burden rate page lists the lines.
Here’s the trap. Burden is often left out of a quoted markup percentage, so ask whether the percentage sits on the pay rate or on the loaded cost, because 35% on $100 and 35% on $124 are different bills. We don’t publish a markup percentage, since a percentage without its base tells you nothing. The bill rate is the one number that compares cleanly across quotes.
Which Funded Security Initiatives Cannot Slip Into 2027?
Devin’s second question is the budget question. “What technology initiatives are already funded that you can’t push into 2027?” Security usually has a few. Remediation tied to an audit with a date. A SOC coverage gap after two analysts left. A customer’s contract clause. An insurer’s renewal condition.
The funding shape matters too. Devin put it this way. “Companies may not approve three or four permanent hires, but they may absolutely approve the resources or project team necessary to complete a $300K or $500K initiative that has already been funded.” A $189,700 squad sits inside that sentence. Four permanent security hires? Different approval. Our post on staffing a project without adding headcount works the same logic for a $300K to $500K budget, and when to use contract cybersecurity talent covers the call between contract and permanent.
Speed helps. The median gap between offer and first day across 1,997 KORE1 contract starts is three days, a firm-wide figure, not a security one. Access is the slow part. Background checks, accounts, VPN and privileged-role approvals can take longer than the search did. Start that paperwork the day you pick the team.
And if a seat works out, 1,040 hours is the line. After that, a contractor can convert to your payroll with no conversion fee from KORE1. At 40 hours a week it’s 26 weeks. If you’re weighing contract staffing as a way to try before you hire, that clock is the point.
Questions Security Leaders Ask Before They Sign
So what does a 90-day contract security remediation team actually cost?
About $189,700 at national index medians. That’s two mid-level security engineers, a mid-level systems engineer and a mid-level project manager, billed hourly at 40 hours a week for 13 weeks.
Six months is $379,400, and a single week runs roughly $14,600. Price the two security seats in the Bay Area and the quarter becomes $212,900.
What should I budget for a penetration tester?
Start from the security engineer cells, because the index has no separate penetration tester cell. Mid-level bills $90 to $116 an hour and senior bills $113 to $136, national.
A two-week test is 80 hours, which at the $126 senior median comes to roughly $10,100 in hourly billing before any retest, and the real number depends on how many applications, networks and cloud accounts are in scope. Use that as an anchor. Not a quote. Specialist testers may bill above the general security range.
Our security team is overwhelmed. What are the augmentation options?
Three shapes cover most of it. A remediation squad closes a finding list, contract analysts fill SOC shifts, and a senior engineer plus a project manager gets you through an audit.
They run $189,700, $202,000 and $107,600 for a quarter, in that order. Pick by what’s on fire.
What do cybersecurity consulting rates look like by the hour?
$90 to $116 an hour for a mid-level security engineer, $113 to $136 for senior, as W2 contract bill rates at national medians (KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4).
Those are rates for people you direct, billed on timesheets, which is how a staffing firm works. Other providers price differently, so compare the hourly equivalent, not the headline.
Can four people cover a 24×7 SOC?
Not quite. Four 40-hour seats cover 160 of the 168 hours in a week, with no room for sick days, vacation or shift handoffs.
Five seats is the practical minimum, about $202,000 a quarter at junior level. Four only works with overtime or an employee covering the gap.
Can a contractor stay on after the squad finishes?
After 1,040 hours, yes, with no conversion fee from KORE1. At 40 hours a week that’s 26 weeks, so a 90-day squad ends before it reaches the line.
Across 552 KORE1 contract-to-hire placements, 37.5% converted to direct hire. A seat you want to keep would need an extension to get there.
Price Your Team
Send the engagement type, seat count, metro, start date and length, and we’ll price the team against the index and tell you where each seat should land. Price your remediation squad with KORE1. If you’d like to see how the numbers are built before you trust them, how the KORE1 Contract Rate Index is built shows the sources and the exclusions, and our cybersecurity staffing practice runs contract and permanent search side by side. Sizing a different team? Run your own seats through the contract staffing cost calculator.
Data: KORE1 Contract Rate Index 2026-Q4, effective October 16, 2026. Observed cells come from KORE1 W2 placements with 2023 to 2026 starts, primarily Southern California, with n shown per cell. Modeled cells use BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics May 2025 estimates, released May 15, 2026, at a 24% employer burden. Three-month cost assumes 520 hours. Assignment length and offer-to-start figures come from KORE1 ended assignments and contract starts. Review date for this page is January 2027, when the index refreshes.
