Fractional CISO and CTO in Nashville
BATO Consulting operates from Nolensville, just south of Nashville. Security and technology leadership for regulated companies in Middle Tennessee, and remotely across the US.
Being based here matters more than it usually would, because Nashville is not a generic market for this work. It is the center of the American for-profit healthcare industry, which means the local concentration of companies that answer to regulators, health system security teams and examiners is higher than the city’s size would suggest.
What is actually here
A healthcare industry that is a local industry
Nashville is the center of the American for-profit healthcare industry. Hospital operators, physician practice management, revenue cycle, health analytics and the vendor ecosystem around all of it are headquartered within a short drive of each other, which means the companies buying health technology here are unusually well informed about it.
Enterprise buyers who audit properly
Selling into a large Nashville health system means a real security review rather than a form. That is a higher bar than many digital health companies have met before, and it arrives earlier in the sales cycle than expected.
A medical device and SaMD presence
Device and software-as-a-medical-device companies in Middle Tennessee face the same Section 524B obligations as anyone, usually with smaller regulatory teams than the coastal companies they are compared against.
Financial services and credit unions
A substantial banking and credit union presence with examination expectations, legacy core platforms and modernization programs that cannot drop transactions.
Growth-stage companies without a technology executive
The most common local version of the problem: a company past product-market fit, with a real compliance surface, whose technology decisions are being made by whoever is nearest to them.
On-site when it is worth being on-site
Most of this work is genuinely remote. The exceptions are the ones where being in the room changes the outcome: a board presentation, an incident post-mortem, a first week of an engagement, a difficult vendor conversation. Being local makes those easy rather than an expense line.
Local, but not only local
Most engagements run remotely and always have, including ones with companies a few miles away. The work is architecture, security programs and documentation that has to hold up when somebody reads it, and none of that improves by being done in the same building.
What being local changes is the handful of moments where a room is better than a call: the first week of an engagement, a board or investor presentation, a post-incident review where the honest conversation needs to happen face to face. Within Middle Tennessee those are simply arranged rather than a travel line in a proposal.
Outside the region the arrangement is the same, remote, with travel when something genuinely needs it. A meaningful share of the work is for companies nowhere near Tennessee.
Where to start
There is no page here for Franklin, Brentwood, Murfreesboro or anywhere else. Those pages would say the same thing with a different word substituted, which is obvious to a reader and to a search engine. If you are in Middle Tennessee, this is the page.
Questions I get asked first
Do you only work with Nashville companies?
No. Most engagements are remote and a meaningful share are for companies nowhere near Tennessee. Being local is an advantage for the moments that benefit from a room, not a requirement.
Are you available on site?
Within Middle Tennessee, easily. Elsewhere, for the things that warrant it: the start of an engagement, board and investor sessions, and post-incident reviews. Routine work does not need it and I would rather not bill you for travel that changes nothing.
Do you work with health systems directly?
Mostly I work with the companies selling to them, which is the side of that conversation where the security evidence has to be assembled. The obligations a health system enforces on its vendors are a large part of what this practice exists to meet.
Where exactly are you based?
Nolensville, Tennessee, about twenty miles south of downtown Nashville.
Written on this
Start with a conversation
Tell me what’s going on. If you are local we can do it over coffee, and if you are not it makes no difference to the work.
Bring your FDA letter, pen test report, audit deadline, or architecture problem. You'll talk to me, not a sales rep.
Not ready for a call? Send a message instead.
For companies looking to engage BATO. Vendors, please email.