Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Information Security Associate

🎯 Role Definition

The Information Security Associate is an early-to-mid level security professional responsible for supporting the organization's security posture through monitoring, detection, incident response, vulnerability management, and policy enforcement. This role works closely with Security Operations Center (SOC) teams, IT, engineering, and compliance to identify risks, remediate security issues, maintain security tooling (SIEM, EDR, vulnerability scanners), and drive continuous improvement in security processes. Ideal candidates demonstrate hands-on technical capability, solid analytic skills, and familiarity with security frameworks (NIST, ISO 27001), cloud security controls (AWS/Azure/GCP), and compliance requirements (PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR).

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Junior SOC Analyst or Security Operations Intern
IT Support Technician, Systems Administrator, or Network Administrator
Application Support Engineer or Junior DevOps/Cloud Engineer

Advancement To:

Information Security Analyst / Security Engineer
Senior SOC Analyst or Incident Response Engineer
Cloud Security Engineer, Vulnerability Management Lead, or Security Consultant

Lateral Moves:

Compliance Analyst or Risk Analyst
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Specialist
Security Awareness & Training Coordinator
Penetration Test / Red Team Associate

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Monitor security alerts, events, and telemetry from SIEM, EDR, IDS/IPS, and cloud-native security services; triage and validate incidents to determine severity and potential business impact.
Perform triage and initial incident response activities including containment, eradication, evidence preservation, and recommendations for remediation while following established incident response playbooks.
Investigate suspicious activity by analyzing logs, packet captures, host forensic artifacts, and threat intelligence to determine root cause and attack chain.
Manage and tune SIEM correlation rules, detection use-cases, and alerting thresholds to reduce false positives and improve detection fidelity.
Conduct regular vulnerability scans across networks, endpoints, web applications, and cloud workloads; validate findings, prioritize remediation, and track remediation progress with stakeholders.
Support patch management and remediation workflows by coordinating with IT and engineering teams to remediate critical and high-risk vulnerabilities within SLA.
Administer and maintain endpoint protection platforms (EDR), anti-malware, host-based firewalls, and device configuration baselines, ensuring deployment consistency and health.
Assist with identity and access management tasks including user access reviews, privileged account monitoring, role-based access control validation, and remediation of excessive permissions.
Participate in threat hunting initiatives using telemetry, threat indicators (IOCs), and hypothesis-driven queries to proactively identify undetected threats.
Maintain and update incident response playbooks, runbooks, standard operating procedures, and security checklists to reflect evolving threats and lessons learned.
Integrate and manage security tooling across cloud and on-prem environments, including ingestion pipelines for logs, alerts, and telemetry into centralized platforms.
Perform application and code security basic assessments (SAST/DAST findings review) and collaborate with development teams to triage remediation tasks and validate fixes.
Conduct security assessments for third-party vendors and partners, review security questionnaires, and escalate vendor risk findings to risk and procurement teams.
Support internal and external compliance audits by preparing evidence, compiling security documentation, and implementing corrective actions for audit findings.
Create and maintain dashboards and reports on security metrics (MTTR, number of incidents, vulnerability remediation rates, detection coverage) for leadership and compliance stakeholders.
Assist in secure configuration and hardening of network devices, servers, and cloud services according to CIS benchmarks, vendor guidance, and internal baselines.
Participate in tabletop exercises and incident simulations to validate team readiness and refine escalation paths, communications, and remediation approaches.
Collaborate with DevOps and engineering on secure-by-design initiatives, threat modeling sessions, and security reviews for new features or architectural changes.
Support data protection initiatives including encryption management, data loss prevention (DLP) tuning, and monitoring for exfiltration attempts.
Maintain up-to-date awareness of the threat landscape, emerging attack techniques, and adversary TTPs; share relevant threat intelligence and recommended mitigations with the team.
Validate and document remediation of security incidents and vulnerabilities, producing clear post-incident reports with timelines, impact, root cause analysis, and remediation verification.
Assist with onboarding and operationalizing new security tools, coordinate vendor implementations, and perform acceptance testing and integration work.
Escalate complex incidents to senior security engineers, legal, privacy, or executive stakeholders as required and support cross-functional communication throughout response workflows.

Secondary Functions

Deliver regular security awareness content, phishing simulation results, and user training recommendations to reduce human risk across the organization.
Help maintain policy, standard, and procedure documentation for systems security, cloud usage, remote access, and acceptable use.
Support periodic risk assessments and business unit security reviews, documenting residual risk and suggested mitigations.
Participate in procurement and contract reviews to ensure security and data protection clauses are included for third-party vendors.
Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives including automation of repetitive tasks (playbook automation, SOAR integrations) and improvement of detection pipelines.
Provide after-hours on-call rotation support for critical security incidents and urgent remediation tasks as part of the SOC schedule.
Assist with baseline configuration and secure deployment guidance for cloud-native services; review IaC templates for basic security misconfigurations.
Maintain inventories of assets, data classifications, and critical services to support incident prioritization and impact analysis.
Support cross-team projects such as migration to new security platforms, rolling out multi-factor authentication (MFA), or implementing data encryption program components.
Facilitate knowledge transfer and mentoring for junior analysts and interns, including walk-throughs of investigations and training on tools.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Security operations experience with SIEM platforms (Splunk, Elastic, Sumo Logic, or similar) — alert triage, log search, and dashboard creation.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) administration and investigations (CrowdStrike, Carbon Black, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, SentinelOne).
Incident response fundamentals: containment, eradication, evidence preservation, root cause analysis, and post-incident reporting.
Vulnerability management tools and processes (Qualys, Nessus, Rapid7 InsightVM, Tenable) — scanning, validation, and remediation tracking.
Basic cloud security knowledge (AWS, Azure, or GCP) including IAM, security groups, cloud logging, and cloud-native detection services.
Networking knowledge: TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP(S), VPNs, firewalls, and packet capture analysis (Wireshark, tcpdump).
Familiarity with security frameworks and standards: NIST CSF, NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, or HIPAA.
Scripting and automation skills (Python, PowerShell, Bash) for tooling automation, log parsing, and remediation tasks.
Knowledge of identity and access management concepts, MFA, SSO, and privileged access monitoring.
Web and application security fundamentals (OWASP Top 10, SAST/DAST concepts) and review of scanner findings.
Experience with threat intelligence consumption, IOC handling, and enrichment of alerts with indicators of compromise.
Basic forensic skills: disk and memory artifact identification, timeline creation, and chain-of-custody practices.
Experience with DLP tools, encryption technologies, and data classification controls.

Soft Skills

Strong analytical thinking with an ability to synthesize logs, alerts, and contextual data into actionable conclusions.
Clear, concise written and verbal communications — able to produce incident reports and present technical findings to non-technical stakeholders.
Collaborative mindset and ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, IT, legal, and product teams.
Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills to manage multiple investigations and tracking remediation actions.
Proactive learner attitude: stays current with evolving threats, tooling improvements, and security best practices.
Ability to work calmly under pressure during security incidents and prioritize actions to minimize business impact.
Customer-service orientation — treats internal teams as customers and helps remediate security issues without disrupting business flow.
Ethical judgment and respect for confidentiality when handling sensitive logs, incident artifacts, and personal data.
Problem-solving orientation with creativity to identify workarounds and automated mitigations for recurring issues.
Time management and ability to document work effectively for auditability and knowledge transfer.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience and certifications.

Preferred Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Computer Science, or related field.
Professional certifications such as CompTIA Security+, GIAC GSEC/GCIH, AWS Security Specialty, Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), or Certified Incident Handler (GCIH) are highly desirable.
Progress toward or attainment of CISSP (for more senior progression).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Cybersecurity / Information Security
Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / Network Engineering
Digital Forensics / Computer Engineering

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

1–3 years in a security operations, IT, or relevant technical role with demonstrable hands-on incident handling and security tooling exposure.

Preferred:

2–5 years of experience in SOC, incident response, vulnerability management, or a similar security role.
Practical experience with SIEM, EDR, cloud security services, and scripting/automation tools.
Demonstrated track record of participating in security incidents, remediation coordination, and audit preparation.