Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cybersecurity Governance Specialist

🎯 Role Definition

The Cybersecurity Governance Specialist leads the development and execution of information security governance, risk management, and compliance initiatives. This role translates regulatory and industry standards into measurable controls, partners with IT, legal, procurement, and business units to reduce cyber risk, and ensures consistent policy, process, and control implementation across cloud, SaaS, and on‑premise environments. The specialist serves as a key liaison for internal and external audits, third‑party risk programs, and executive reporting on security posture and remediation progress.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Information Security Analyst focused on controls and compliance
IT Risk or Compliance Analyst (GRC)
IT Auditor or SOC Analyst transitioning into governance

Advancement To:

Senior Cybersecurity Governance Manager / GRC Manager
Head of Security Governance & Risk
Director of Information Security / Deputy CISO

Lateral Moves:

Privacy Officer / Data Protection Lead
Third‑Party Risk Manager
IT Audit Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead the design, development, and continuous improvement of the organization’s cybersecurity governance framework, ensuring alignment with ISO 27001, NIST CSF, COBIT, and industry best practices to drive measurable improvements in security posture.
Develop, maintain, and enforce enterprise information security policies, standards, procedures, and guidelines that translate regulatory requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SOX) and contractual obligations into operational controls across IT, cloud, and business functions.
Conduct, manage, and document enterprise risk assessments and business impact analyses, including identification of threats and vulnerabilities, likelihood and impact scoring, risk prioritization, and development of risk treatment plans in partnership with risk owners.
Coordinate and execute third‑party risk management processes: onboard new vendors into the vendor risk program, perform security questionnaires and assessments, define remediation expectations, and track remediation to closure.
Manage internal and external audit lifecycles for information security and privacy: prepare audit artifacts, address auditor inquiries, lead remediation programs, and present evidence of control effectiveness to auditors and regulators.
Define, implement, and operate a formal control testing program and metrics (KPIs / KRIs) to monitor control performance, escalate control exceptions, and drive continuous improvement of security controls and processes.
Serve as the primary liaison for regulatory and compliance engagements, interpreting evolving regulations and assessing impact to the security program; translate legal and regulatory requirements into technical and process controls.
Develop and deliver executive and board-level reporting on cybersecurity governance, risk posture, remediation progress, compliance status (SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, HIPAA), and program maturity using dashboards and risk heat maps.
Lead gap analysis and readiness assessments for industry certifications and attestations (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 certification readiness), create remediation roadmaps, and coordinate cross-functional implementation projects.
Own information classification, data handling, and data lifecycle governance initiatives to ensure appropriate technical and administrative controls, retention, and encryption policies for sensitive and regulated data.
Drive identity and access management governance: define role-based access control (RBAC) policies, review privileged access practices, coordinate periodic access reviews, and ensure alignment with least privilege principles.
Partner with Cloud and Platform teams to embed security governance into cloud adoption and SaaS procurement processes; assess cloud security controls, shared responsibility models, and CI/CD pipeline governance.
Design and maintain an enterprise-wide incident response governance model: define escalation paths, roles and responsibilities, communication plans, and post-incident review and remediation governance for consistent lessons learned and control enhancements.
Establish and maintain a formal change control and exceptions process for security controls, ensuring all deviations are risk-assessed, approved, timeboxed, documented, and communicated to stakeholders.
Implement and operate a centralized Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) tool (e.g., RSA Archer, ServiceNow GRC, OneTrust) to manage policies, risks, controls, assessments, audit evidence, and remediation tracking.
Drive programmatic initiatives for data privacy and protection in coordination with Legal and Privacy functions, including DPIAs, cross-border data transfer assessments, and privacy controls mapping.
Facilitate cross-functional risk and control workshops with business stakeholders to socialize control ownership, obtain commitments for remediation, and ensure alignment of security objectives with business priorities.
Create and maintain standardized templates, playbooks, and guidance for control implementation, risk assessments, policy exceptions, and audit evidence collection to improve repeatability and reduce friction during audits.
Monitor and analyze regulatory and threat landscape changes, advising leadership on emerging compliance risks, required control changes, and strategic roadmap adjustments to proactively address regulatory scrutiny.
Manage remediation programs including tracking of remediation tasks, assigning owners, verifying remediation evidence, escalating unresolved issues to leadership, and maintaining transparency with stakeholders.
Drive security awareness and training governance: define mandatory compliance training, role-based training requirements for privileged users and developers, and measure training completion and effectiveness metrics.
Collaborate with Legal and Procurement to embed security and privacy clauses in contracts, vendor agreements, and Statements of Work to ensure enforceable security obligations and right-to-audit provisions.

Secondary Functions

Support cross-functional security initiatives such as privacy assessments, vendor onboarding, and secure procurement processes by providing governance input and compliance requirements.
Assist with ad-hoc evidence collection for audits and compliance reviews, ensuring artifacts are complete, consistent, and mapped to controls and regulatory requirements.
Provide subject-matter expertise for security architecture and control design reviews, ensuring new projects and implementations consider governance and compliance needs.
Contribute to program-level budget prioritization and project planning by estimating remediation effort, control implementation costs, and timelines for security initiatives.
Mentor junior GRC and security operations staff on governance processes, risk assessment techniques, audit preparation, and control testing methodologies.
Participate in incident response post mortems to ensure governance follow-up actions are incorporated into remediation plans and policy updates.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Deep working knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks and standards: ISO 27001 / ISO 27002, NIST CSF / SP 800-53, COBIT, and SOC 2 control criteria.
Hands-on experience with GRC platforms such as RSA Archer, ServiceNow GRC, OneTrust, MetricStream or similar tools for policy, risk, control, and audit management.
Practical experience conducting enterprise risk assessments, control gap analyses, and building remediation roadmaps with measurable timelines and owners.
Familiarity with regulatory requirements and industry compliance regimes: GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOX, CCPA, and sector-specific regulations; ability to map requirements to controls.
Knowledge of third‑party risk management methodologies and vendor assessment tools, including questionnaire design, risk scoring, and remediation workflows.
Ability to design control testing procedures and interpret audit findings, including preparing documentation to evidence control operating effectiveness for internal and external audits.
Understanding of cloud security governance and controls across AWS, Azure, and GCP, including shared responsibility models, IAM controls, encryption, and secure configuration baselines.
Experience with identity governance and privileged access management (PAM) concepts, role-based access control (RBAC), and access review processes.
Familiarity with incident response governance, business continuity planning, and disaster recovery governance and testing requirements.
Proficiency with reporting and visualization tools (Power BI, Tableau, Excel) to build executive dashboards, KPIs, and risk heat maps for leadership reporting.
Knowledge of privacy practices, DPIAs, and techniques to operationalize privacy-by-design across projects and vendor relationships.
Experience integrating security governance into agile and DevOps processes, including control automation, CI/CD security checks, and developer security training.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management and executive presence: able to influence senior leaders and cross-functional teams to adopt risk-based decisions and deliver remediation.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills for drafting policies, audit responses, executive briefings, and board-level summaries.
Analytical mindset with strong attention to detail for control design, evidence review, and risk scoring consistency.
Project management and prioritization capabilities to coordinate multiple remediation efforts, vendor assessments, and certification readiness programs.
Problem-solving orientation with the ability to translate high-level regulatory requirements into practical, implementable controls.
Collaborative team player comfortable working across IT, Legal, Procurement, HR, and business units to embed governance controls.
Change management and training skills to drive adoption of new policies, controls, and security practices across the organization.
Integrity and sound judgment when handling sensitive security and privacy information and escalations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, Risk Management, or a related technical or business discipline.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Information Security, Cybersecurity, Business Administration (MBA) with risk focus, or advanced degree in a related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Cybersecurity / Information Security
Information Technology / Computer Science
Information Systems / Risk Management
Business Administration with compliance focus
Legal / Privacy (for privacy governance specialization)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

5 to 8+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity governance, GRC, risk management, or IT audit functions.

Preferred:

7+ years of demonstrated experience implementing and operating enterprise GRC programs, leading audits and certification efforts (SOC 2, ISO 27001), and managing third‑party risk programs.
Proven track record working with cross-functional teams in medium to large enterprises and driving remediation through to closure.

Certifications (highly desirable): CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CISA, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer/Auditor, or equivalent vendor certifications in GRC tooling.