---
title: "The AI security lifecycle: four moments, four artifacts"
description: "Security for an AI company is four moments, not one purchase. The trigger for each, what it unlocks, and the four published rules for how each engagement makes..."
source: "https://www.kensink.com/ai-security/lifecycle/"
canonical: "https://www.kensink.com/ai-security/lifecycle/"
---
AI SECURITY · THE LIFECYCLE

# Four moments. Four artifacts. One path.

The artifact you already own makes the next engagement cheaper, faster or unnecessary. Here is exactly how much, published up front, so you can plan the path instead of reacting to invoices.

STAGE 01 · BUILD

“We’re shipping fast.”

First agent in production. First real customer data. Nobody is asking yet.

STAGE 02 · PROVE

“A deal is stuck.”

A questionnaire lands, usually three weeks before the rep promised close.

STAGE 03 · SCALE

“More of them.”

Three deals in flight. The agent gained a tool that can spend money.

STAGE 04 · CERTIFY

“They’re auditing us.”

SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 42001 on an RFP, an EU customer, an underwriter.

STAGE 02 · IN DETAIL

## “A deal is stuck.”

The sharpest, most fundable moment in the lifecycle, because the return is a single number the founder already knows.

When it bites

A security questionnaire lands, usually about three weeks before the rep promised close. Or a diligence list arrives. Or legal redlines the AI clause.

What is going wrong

Vendor questionnaires now carry **30 to 80 AI-specific questions**: training data, model provenance, prompt-injection defenses, output filtering, incident response, EU AI Act position. SOC 2 alone fails that section outright.

Who is watching

**87% of enterprise buyers** check your posture before they ever speak to procurement, increasingly with an agent that scrapes your site. Your trust page needs to be machine-readable, not just readable.

The unlock

The contract sitting in procurement. Put your own number in: at a **$120,000** contract, the Trust Pack is **5.4% of year one**, and the same pack answers the next buyer’s questionnaire too.

What to buy

**AI Trust Pack**, once, 2 weeks, from $6,500. Or **Deal Desk**, ongoing, from $1,200/mo, if questionnaires are arriving faster than you can answer them.

PRICING · PUBLISHED

## How the compounding is priced.

Four rules. Each is a real discount for a real reason, not a sales gesture. Published so you can plan a path.

| Rule | The discount | Why it is real |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Inventory | −$2,500 | Any engagement drops $2,500 when a current AI-BOM exists. Otherwise week one is spent building the inventory, and we will not charge for it twice. |
| Build | $9,000$28,000 | Containment during a build is a design decision. Afterwards it is surgery through live code. |
| Suite | $2,800$4,200 | Care is cheaper monthly when an eval suite exists. Without one, every month includes building the tests before running them. |
| Evidence | $13,500$18,000 | Audit Readiness drops when the Policy Layer and Eval Suite exist. Audit logs and eval results already are controls evidence. |

**The contract language.** “Current” means produced or refreshed by us within 90 days. A buyer who reads this page will otherwise ask for the inventory discount without a current inventory.

WORKED PATH A

## Twelve months, triggered by a stalled deal.

The most common path we expect to see, with the compounding shown rather than claimed.

| When | Trigger | Buy | Cost | Artifact gained |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Month 0 | First enterprise questionnaire | AI Trust Pack | $6,500 | AI-BOM, Evidence Pack |
| Month 2 | Agent gains write access to production | AI Red Team | $14,000 | Eval Suite |
| Month 3 | Two more deals in flight | Security Care | $2,800/mo | Everything stays current |
| Month 6 | Agent starts handling payments | Agent Containment | $28,000 | Policy Layer |
| Month 9 | EU customer asks for ISO 42001 | Audit Readiness | $13,500$18,000 | Auditor-ready package |

$90k

Year one, on the compounding path

5 engagements + 10 months of care

$108.5k

The same five purchases with no shared artifacts, plus about three extra weeks of repeated discovery

Cold-purchase equivalent

NEXT STEP

## Not sure which stage you are in?

That is the call. Fifteen minutes, no deck. We will name the moment you are in and what it costs to get past it.

[Book a 15-min intro →](https://www.kensink.com/contact) [Back to AI Security ↗](https://www.kensink.com/ai-security)