Best Entrust, LLC · Independent Assurance

AI Governance Audit & Assurance

Independent AI governance audits and ISO/IEC 42001 & NIST AI RMF readiness assessments for mid-market regulated organizations. Fixed fees. Audit and advisory only — never implementation.

ISO 42001Readiness
NIST AI RMFMapped
FixedFee
IndependentBy design
The gap this fills

Mid-market regulated companies are asking for help and not getting it.

The large consulting firms serve the Fortune 500 at Fortune 500 prices. Hiring your own AI governance lead means competing in a market where organizations overwhelmingly report needing more governance capacity than they have, and where the hiring cycle for these roles runs months, not weeks. A regional bank, health system, or defense subcontractor cannot pay Big Four rates and cannot wait half a year for one candidate — but the regulatory expectations arrive on schedule regardless.

Best Entrust exists in that gap: independent, practitioner-led AI governance assurance sized and priced for the mid-market — financial services, healthcare, and defense subcontractors in particular.

Why independence matters
Audit and advisory only. Never implementation. A firm that sells implementation on the back end has an incentive to find problems it can be paid to fix. We don't build what we audit — which is why our findings are defensible to a board, a regulator, or an examiner. Independence isn't a limitation of the model. It is the product.
The services
Core engagement · Fixed fee

AI Governance Audit & Readiness Assessment

An independent audit of your AI governance posture, mapped to ISO/IEC 42001 and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, with crosswalks to COBIT and ISO/IEC 27001 where your existing control environment already lives. Covers AI inventory and classification, policy and accountability structures, risk assessment practices, documentation sufficiency, vendor and model governance, and monitoring controls.

1
Scored readiness assessment — where you stand against ISO 42001 and NIST AI RMF expectations, with evidence cited for every finding.
2
Gap register with prioritization — each gap rated by regulatory exposure and remediation effort, with owners and sequence.
3
Board- and examiner-ready report — written to be shown to the people who will ask, plus an executive briefing session.
$25,000 – $60,000Fixed fee, set at scoping based on AI footprint, entity count, and regulatory scope — agreed before work begins, never hourly.
Recurring layer · Quarterly

Attestation & Monitoring Retainers

Governance isn't a point-in-time exercise — frameworks, models, and regulatory expectations all move. Quarterly independent attestation keeps your evidence current: control re-testing, documentation review, change assessment for new AI deployments, and a standing quarterly attestation letter your compliance function can file.

Recurring layer · Monthly

Fractional AI Governance Officer

Emerging frameworks increasingly expect organizations to designate an accountable AI governance lead. Retain the function instead of running the search: a named, credentialed practitioner who owns your AI governance calendar, chairs your AI review process, maintains the documentation regulators expect, and briefs your board — without the implementation conflicts of interest.

The scope covers the full demand side of AI leadership, not just compliance: the AI use-case roadmap — identifying and prioritizing where AI creates measurable value across your functions; ROI prioritization and business cases your CFO and board can act on; and an adoption framework that coaches your functional leaders through the change. Your IT team and vendors own the build. We own the what, the why, and whether it's working.

The market context: hiring this role full-time means competing for candidates commanding $400K–$570K in total compensation, with time-to-hire for AI governance and strategy roles running four to six months — if the search yields at all. The fractional model delivers the same accountable function at a fraction of the cost, starting in weeks, not quarters.

$9,500/monthOrganizations under 1,000 employees
$15,000/monthOrganizations of 1,000+ employees
Where to start

Not sure you need a full audit yet? Start upstream: the free AI Readiness Index scores your posture in 15 minutes, and the Deep Assessment ($9,500 / $20,000) replaces self-report with evidence. Both feed directly into audit scoping — nothing you do earlier is wasted.

Who conducts it
AM

Dr. Andrew Mangle — CISSP, CISA, CSSLP, PMP. DHS fellowship focused on LLM evaluation. Published work mapping AI governance to NIST AI RMF, COBIT, and ISO/IEC 27001. Eighteen years across enterprise technology, security consulting for public and private entities, and faculty in Management Information Systems. The CISA matters here specifically: independent audit and assurance is what it certifies — and a practitioner with no implementation practice behind the audit is more credible as an independent auditor, not less.

Start the conversation

Request a scoping conversation

Tell us about your organization and we'll be in contact within one business day. First conversations are free and carry no obligation — including a 60-minute AI risk exposure review if you'd like one.

Thank you — we're on it.

Your request has been received. Someone from Best Entrust will be in contact within one business day to schedule the conversation.

In the meantime, the free instrument gives us both a head start on scoping.

Take the AI Readiness Index →