AI Governance For Lean Security Teams

Stand up AI governance without stretching your team.

Rivial helps lean security teams build a NIST-aligned AI governance program in nine weeks. You stay focused on running the rest of your security program. We deliver the assessment, the documentation, and the workflows your Board, your business, and your auditors will accept.

9 Weeks: From kickoff to operating AI governance program

NIST AI RMF: Use the framework regulators are starting to cite

150+: Security teams served

See what clients say

Most lean security teams already know an AI policy isn’t enough. The harder problem is finding the time to build everything underneath it: the inventory, the intake workflow, the vendor review process, the updated KRIs, the IR playbooks, the Board reporting. All on top of audit prep, vendor reviews, and the day job.

That’s the gap we close. Over a focused nine-week engagement, we work as an extension of your team to assess where your AI governance stands today, benchmark it against the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and build the policies, workflows, and ongoing processes you need to govern AI use. When we hand the program back to you, it’s ready to run. No 80-page binder. No “phase two” you have to staff yourself.

An extension of your team

We don’t hand you a framework and walk away. Working sessions with IT, risk, compliance, business owners, and leadership are part of the engagement, and we draft the documentation and directly help operationalize the program. Most clients say it feels less like a consulting project and more like adding a fractional governance lead for nine weeks — which is exactly what a lean team needs to get this done without falling behind on everything else.
Built on NIST AI RMF

We benchmark your program against Govern, Map, Measure, and Manage, then turn the Govern function into a Board-ready maturity radar chart that shows where you are today and where you’re heading. One artifact, one visual, that holds up in any leadership or audit conversation. When examiners and auditors start asking about AI — they already are — you’ll have a documented answer mapped to the framework they’re citing.
Integrated with the program you already run

Governance

AI governance policy, plus targeted updates to your information security, vendor management, and business continuity policies. Procurement and change management get adjusted to catch shadow AI and vendor-introduced AI before it lands in production. We define roles, responsibilities, and the oversight committee structure your Board expects to see.

Compliance

Continuous control testing for AI-affected systems, mapped to the frameworks your auditors care about — NIST AI RMF, NIST CSF 2.0, and the sector-specific frameworks that apply to you (FFIEC, NCUA ISE, GLBA, HIPAA, and others). One workstream for cyber and AI compliance, not two.

AI Use-Case Intake

A repeatable intake and approval workflow for AI use cases, so business units have a clear path to bring AI requests to security instead of routing around you. Use-case tracking, risk reviews, issue escalation, and periodic reassessment built into the same governance rhythm you already run.

Risk

Risk appetite and loss tolerance reviewed in the context of AI benefits and exposure. AI-affected information systems identified and reassessed. Key Risk Indicators updated for AI-specific failure modes — drift, bias, data poisoning, prompt injection — and AI controls defined, tested, and tracked alongside your existing cyber controls.

Vendor Security

AI-aware vendor due diligence and questionnaires. Visibility into fourth- and fifth-party model providers and how your data is being used. Ongoing monitoring for AI features added post-contract — the vendor drift that quietly changes your risk profile between renewals.

Incidence Response

AI-specific playbooks for model failures, bias incidents, data exposure through AI tools, and vendor AI outages. Business unit involvement built into the response, not just IT and security — because AI incidents rarely stay inside the security team’s lane.

“Rivial is an extension of our team and not just another vendor relationship that we have.”

Mike Slone, AVP of Information Security

UK Credit Union

“The GRC team was a team of one. Rivial definitely was a huge help.”

Rivial client

“From my side, life-changing. That was totally a game-changer.”

David Armstrong, AVP Information Security

Rogue Credit Union

Why do we need a dedicated AI governance program if we already have a cybersecurity program?
Why nine weeks? What if our team is too lean to commit that kind of time?

The nine-week timeline is built specifically for lean teams. We do the building — the assessment, the gap analysis, the policy drafts, the workflows, the roadmap. Your team contributes context and decisions in working sessions, not full-time effort. It’s short enough to actually finish, structured enough to produce real artifacts, and designed so you don’t have to pause your day job to get it done.
Which frameworks does this map to?
What does the engagement actually produce?
What happens after the nine weeks?
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