What is VAST?

VAST is ITHQ’s strategic framework for understanding and improving technology systematically

Tech spend becomes tech investment, with more value generated from the existing estate and ROI as the focus.

VAST gives leadership teams a practical way to assess where they are today, identify the gaps that matter most, and build a roadmap for what happens next. It stands for: Visibility, Availability, Stability and Transmutability.

VAST explained

VAST is ITHQ’s integrated technology maturity and roadmap framework.

Instead of looking at cyber, infrastructure, IT operations and Data & AI in isolation, VAST connects them.

This matters because most technology problems do not stay neatly in one domain. Weak visibility drives poor decisions. Operational instability creates security risk. Poor infrastructure design limits scale. Weak governance undermines data and AI value. VAST gives you:

  • A clearer view of current maturity
  • A stronger alignment between technology and business priorties
  • Evidence-based recommendations
  • Practical, prioritised roadmaps
  • A more joined-up basis for planning and investment

VAST is an ongoing process. Through quarterly touchpoints, roadmap governance and annual reassessment, your estate is continually measured for progress and ROI.

TLDR: One client reported a 25% reduction in insurance payments, for double the insurance cover, as a direct result of the VAST process and reports demonstrating ongoing improvements in resilience

Why VAST matters

Most organisations do not have a technology problem. They have a clarity problem.

Technological and operational resilience is a never-ending project. Compliance regulations change, cyber threats advance and attack surfaces grow.

You probably have multiple tools, multiple teams and multiple priorities, but could still lack a joined-up understanding of:

  • Where the greatest risks really sit
  • Which weaknesses are slowing the business down
  • What to fix first
  • How one area affects another
  • How to turn assessment into action

VAST solves these by creating one strategic view across four critical domains, allowing you to create a prioritised roadmap for improvement and optimisation.

What VAST delivers

Clearly understand where you are with your tech estate, where the risks sit, and what to prioritise next.

VAST gives leadership teams a clear view of maturity, risk and investment priorities across the technology estate. It turns fragmented issues into a more joined-up picture, making decisions easier and roadmaps more practical.

The result is better prioritisation, stronger resilience, and clearer links between technology improvement and business outcomes. VAST helps organisations to:

  • Understand current maturity more clearly
  • Improve visibility of technology risk
  • Prioritise investment more effectively
  • Strengthen resilience across key areas
  • Plan and budget with more confidence
Talk to a VAST strategist

VAST is especially valuable for organisations that are:

Preparing for growth

Planning transformation

Facing resilience or compliance pressures

Dealing with fragmented systems or teams

Investing in cloud, operations or AI without a clear maturity model

Seeking a stronger strategic view across technology

Cuts complexity
Drives action
Sharpens investment
Exposes risk
Connects strategy
Clarifies priorities
Builds roadmaps
Strengthens resilience
Unifies estates
Aligns technology
Reveals gaps
Improves visibility
Accelerates change
Builds confidence

How VAST works

VAST is a continuous resilience and maturity process, much more than a one-off audit or static report

The journey starts with detailed assessment, analysis, and scoring, followed up by a clear, action-oriented roadmap. You receive an accurate picture of your current maturity, risk profile, and where to direct investment for the greatest impact.

But VAST doesn’t stop there. As an ongoing strategic partnership, it comprises regular review cycles, roadmap updates, quarterly leadership touchpoints and continual reassessment as technology, business priorities, risks and regulations evolve. Rather than a simple snapshot, you gain a measurable, multi-year improvement plan.

VAST enables to you:

  • Continuously advance maturity across the 4 domains of VAST
  • Track and evidence resilience and optimisation progress
  • Align tech investment with ever-changing business needs
  • Evolve roadmaps as new risks, threats, and requirements emerge
  • Demonstrate ongoing progress, ROI, and governance to leadership and stakeholders
  • Build a more robust scalable and adaptable tech estate

The VAST process far exceeds the ROI of a typical consultancy assessment or static health check.

The 4 domains of VAST

First, you get Visibility, Availability, Stability and Transmutability across the whole business.
Then we can drill down into your 4 critical technological domains.

VAST is the umbrella strategy that reveals the big picture of what's going on in your tech estate.

The VAST Lifecycle
Assess > Analyse > Prioritise > Improve > Review > Reassess > Mature > Optimise


Within VAST are four specialist assessment and improvement models, each focused on a different domain:
SAFE for cyber resilience, PACE for IT operations, RISE for infrastructure, and FLOW for Data & AI.

SAFE
Make it secure

Cyber resilience with structure, clarity and business alignment

Learn More
RISE
Make it stable

Stronger infrastructure for resilience, scale and efficiency

Learn More
PACE
Make it perform

Better IT operations, less friction, stronger outcomes

Learn More
FLOW
Make it smart

Data & AI maturity that turns potential into business value

Learn More

Mark Petar, Head of Systems, Montanaro

"SAFE from ITHQ is ... an evidence-based discussion with proportional outcomes based on business needs. Management can see exactly where [my budget's] gone, where the time and effort's gone ... We can basically prove: 'Look at the difference we've made.' The SAFE reports provide an independent view of our systems like Pen Tests and are 32 pages long: very useful in many regulation-centric scenarios.

The difference in what ITHQ has done for us as a company is just gigantic."

SAFE

Cyber resilience with structure and clarity

SAFE is ITHQ’s methodology for assessing and improving cyber resilience. It helps organisations understand how prepared they are to protect, detect, respond, recover and improve across the areas that matter most.

Rather than listing isolated technical weaknesses, SAFE creates a structured view of cyber resilience for both technical and business stakeholders. It supports better decisions, stronger prioritisation, and a clearer link between security activity and business risk. SAFE allows us to:

  • Identify key cyber resilience gaps
  • Test whether controls are proportionate
  • Assess governance and response maturity
  • Review governance and oversight
  • Examine security policies
  • Cover awareness, identity and vulnerability management

SAFE dynamically improves cyber resilience with measurable ROI.

RISE

Stronger infrastructure for resilience, scale and efficiency

RISE helps organisations assess infrastructure maturity, reduce complexity, and build environments that are more resilient, integrated and ready to scale.

RISE helps assess infrastructure maturity across cloud, on-premises and hybrid environments. It helps organisations understand whether their infrastructure is strong enough to support resilience, change and growth.

Where infrastructure has become complex, fragmented or costly to manage, RISE is particularly powerful. It give us clarity over infrastructure capability and helps teams prioritise the improvements that will deliver the most value. Using RISE, we can:

  • Assess infrastructure resilience
  • Review service integration
  • Test scalability readiness
  • Examine capacity and automation
  • Evaluate cloud maturity
  • Highlight efficiency opportunities

RISE enables organisations to build infrastructure that can support long-term business needs.

Whether the challenge starts in cyber, infrastructure, IT operations or Data & AI,
VAST helps you see the bigger picture and take action that gets results.

Book your VAST discovery call

PACE

Better IT operations, less friction, stronger user outcomes

PACE helps organisations optimise IT operations and reduce operational friction, improving service performance, continuity and user experience.

It focuses on how platforms and services perform, how efficiently work is delivered, how disruption is handled, and how users experience support.

PACE helps organisations move from reactive operations to structured, measurable and scalable service delivery. It creates a clearer view of operational maturity and helps teams prioritise the changes that will improve service quality and efficiency. Using PACE helps us to:

  • Assess service performance
  • Identify automation opportunities
  • Review continuity maturity
  • Examine incident management
  • Evaluate service desk capability
  • Highlight user experience gaps

PACE delivers actionable plans that improve IT operations at scale.

FLOW

Data & AI maturity that turns potential into business value

FLOW enables organisations to take control of how Data & AI are being used, improve outputs, strengthen governance, and turn investment into scalable business value.

FLOW is built for organisations that want more than experimentation. It creates clarity of control, governance and value, helping teams prioritise the improvements that will make data and AI more useful and scalable. FLOW allows us to:

  • Assess Data & AI foundations including data quality and availability
  • Review governance and controls
  • Examine operational maturity
  • Evaluate deployment and monitoring
  • Highlight data quality gaps
  • Connect capability to business value

FLOW gives organisations solid, controlled, Data & AI capability that delivers real outcomes.

VAST strategy FAQs

What is VAST?

VAST is ITHQ’s strategic framework for understanding and improving technology across the areas that matter most to modern organisations. It combines SAFE for cyber resilience, PACE for IT operations, RISE for infrastructure, and FLOW for Data & AI under one strategic model: Visibility, Availability, Stability and Transmutability.

Is VAST a one-off audit or health check report?

No. VAST a process, unique to ITHQ. We start with a detailed assessment, analysis, and scoring, followed by the creation of a clear, action-oriented roadmap. This process gives you an accurate picture of your current maturity, risk profile, and where to direct investment for the greatest impact. Through quarterly reviews, plus ongoing measurement and improvements, you are always ahead of risks, threats or the pressures of scaling.

What is the purpose of VAST?

VAST helps organisations understand technology maturity across cyber, infrastructure, IT operations and Data & AI, then turn that understanding into a practical improvement roadmap. We can't measure what we can't see. This 360-degree, 3D view of your business delivers clear scores across four key areas. VAST scopes your tech landscape and makes everything visible.

What is SAFE in VAST?

SAFE is the cyber resilience strategy within VAST. It stands for Strategy, Assessment, Frameworks and Execution and is used to assess and improve organisational cybermaturity. We understand your security posture, identifying risks and weak spots so you know exactly where to focus. SAFE makes everything secure.

What is RISE in VAST?

RISE is the infrastructure strategy within VAST. It stands for Resilience, Integration, Scalability and Efficiency and helps organisations improve infrastructure maturity across cloud and hybrid estates. With the resilience priorities clear, we make environments robust, orderly and predictable. RISE makes everything stable.

What is PACE in VAST?

PACE is the IT operations strategy within VAST. It stands for Performance, Automation, Continuity and Experience and helps organisations improve operational maturity and service quality. Once stability is achieved, we instil operational discipline and readiness, building accountability at every level. PACE makes everything perform well.

What is FLOW in VAST?

FLOW is the Data & AI strategy within VAST. It stands for Foundation, Literacy, Operationalisation and Wisdom and helps organisations assess and improve data and AI maturity. Resilient systems allow us to safely drive progress in areas like automation, advanced data, and artificial intelligence. FLOW makes everything smart.

Who is VAST for?

VAST is suitable for any organisation seeking a clearer technology strategy, stronger maturity insight, better prioritisation and a more practical basis for investment and improvement. VAST reports help with executive buy-in, compliance, proof of returns, insurance policies and more.

Does VAST support roadmap planning?

Yes. One of the main outpus of VAST is a prioritised roadmap that connects findings to business-aligned action.

Case Studies

JT (Jersey Telecom)

ITHQ’s bespoke MDR-X solution delivered unsurpassed visibility, critical compliance, broad security engagement and ROI within weeks, for JT Global. Learn how.

Read On
David Lloyd Leisure

Case study | Rubrik Backup-as-a-Service from ITHQ has dramatically improved security posture for David Lloyd, a leading UK fitness group.

Read On
Scan Computers

Scan Computers is one of the UK's most established technology providers. They have realised significant performance improvements with ITHQ-run projects.

Read On

Latest articles

Strategy
The Wicked Tech Problem: You Are a Passenger in Your Own Vehicle

Vendor lock-in is not just a technology issue. Bundling, platform dependency, and reseller bias create resilience risk, says David Thomas.

Read On
Strategy
ITHQ Resilience Strategies: Game Plans With The Win Built In

Achieving measurable resilience via strategic tech investment … ITHQ is with you from kick off to triumph.

Read On
Cyber Resilence
Why Rapid7 is the Inaugural Champion of Exposure Management

Rapid7 has defined exposure management. Discover how its Command Platform leads the field.

Read On

Latest videos

All-in-One IT freedom: seamless user and app control
JumpCloud, Single Sign-On, Centralised App Management

What does true tech freedom mean to you? Scott and Chris talk about the benefits of securely accessing all your apps with SSO, frictionless user and permissions management, all via the cloud and one simple platform

Automating Vulnerability Intelligence for Network Security
Cyber Resilience, Automated Vulnerability Management

BackBox CEO, Rekha Shenoy, and Technical Director, Tony Dalton, demonstrate why automation is key to maintaining cyber resilience at the network level. Watch this webinar to understand how BackBox helps eliminate time-consuming manual tasks while improving security posture through automated vulnerability management.

Webinar: SAFE Security Posture Assessment
Cyber Resilience, Security Posture Assessment, David Thomas, Case Study, Webinar

Compliant does not necessarily equal Resilient. One of our financial sector clients discusses the difference a SAFE Assessment has made to their security posture with our Head of Cyber Resilience, Dave Thomas

Want to know more? Let's talk.

Contact Us