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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Information Security Lead

💰 $140,000 - $200,000

Information SecurityCybersecurityLeadershipRisk & Compliance

🎯 Role Definition

The Information Security Lead is responsible for defining and delivering a comprehensive information security program that protects the company's assets, ensures regulatory and contractual compliance, and enables secure business growth. This role blends technical leadership, strategic risk management, and hands-on operational delivery — guiding engineers, product owners, and stakeholders to make secure choices across software, infrastructure, and business processes. The Information Security Lead is often the primary escalation point for major incidents and a visible security champion across the organization.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Information Security Engineer
  • Security Architect
  • GRC / Compliance Manager

Advancement To:

  • Director of Information Security
  • Head of Security / VP, Security
  • Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Lateral Moves:

  • Cloud Security Lead
  • Security Program Manager
  • Privacy / Data Protection Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop, maintain and evolve the enterprise information security strategy, roadmap and policies to align security investments with business objectives, regulatory requirements and emerging threat vectors; ensure continuous improvement and measurable KPIs for security posture.
  • Lead identification, assessment and mitigation of information security risks across applications, cloud services (AWS, Azure, GCP), corporate networks and third-party vendor relationships; drive a formal risk register and remediation lifecycle until closure.
  • Design and operate the vulnerability management program including discovery, prioritization, remediation SLAs, and reporting for internal and external scanning tools (SCA, SAST, DAST) and coordinate with engineering teams to reduce remediation time and risk exposure.
  • Own identity and access management (IAM) strategy and controls including role-based access, least privilege enforcement, privileged access management (PAM), directory services and federated authentication (SAML, OIDC), and conduct regular access reviews.
  • Develop, test and lead incident response plans — coordinate cross-functional response teams during security incidents, ensure evidence preservation, drive root cause analysis, implement corrective actions and produce post-incident reports for leadership and customers.
  • Run threat modeling and secure design reviews for new product features and infrastructure changes; provide concrete mitigation recommendations and verify implementation prior to production deployments.
  • Manage the cloud security architecture and controls for containerized and serverless environments, implementing infrastructure-as-code security checks, secrets management, network segmentation, and cloud-native IAM best practices.
  • Own encryption policies and key management (both at-rest and in-transit), secure certificate lifecycle management, PKI considerations and data protection strategy, including data classification and encryption standards.
  • Lead the security operations and monitoring program, define SIEM use cases, tune detection rules, manage alert triage processes, and collaborate with SOC teams or managed detection providers to ensure rapid detection and containment.
  • Oversee a vendor security and third-party risk management program: perform security questionnaires, run contractual security reviews, manage remediation plans and enforce security requirements in procurement and vendor onboarding.
  • Execute and manage compliance programs (ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA where applicable), coordinate external audits and attestations, drive gap remediation and provide evidence and narratives to auditors and executive stakeholders.
  • Define and deliver developer-focused security initiatives: embed DevSecOps practices, integrate security gates into CI/CD pipelines, sponsor secure coding training, and partner with engineering leads to reduce security debt.
  • Create and maintain security metrics, dashboards and executive reporting to inform senior leadership and the board on risk posture, incident trends, compliance status and the ROI of security investments.
  • Lead cross-functional security governance, chair security steering committees, and influence P&L owners and product teams to adopt compensating controls and security-by-design principles.
  • Build and mentor a high-performing security team: recruit, coach, define career paths, set objectives, and establish on-call rotations and escalation playbooks to ensure operational resilience.
  • Manage security budgets and vendor relationships, evaluate security tooling (EDR, DLP, CASB, WAF, IAST), negotiate contracts and ensure cost-effective selection and ROI.
  • Implement data loss prevention (DLP), endpoint protection strategies, and remote work security controls including MDM, secure workspace and conditional access to secure hybrid workforces and contractor populations.
  • Coordinate privacy and security collaboration with Legal, Privacy, HR and Risk to ensure secure data handling, breach notification readiness and contractual protection for customers and partners.
  • Drive continuous security awareness and training programs for the organization including phishing simulations, role-based training, and onboarding security education to shift left on human risk.
  • Establish and execute business continuity and disaster recovery security requirements, participate in tabletop exercises, and ensure backups and recovery procedures meet RTO/RPO targets and are periodically tested.
  • Serve as the escalation point for customer security reviews and RFP/RFI security questionnaires, present security posture to clients, and help secure new business through strong security governance and evidence-based assurances.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc security inquiries and produce tailored risk assessments and statements of applicability for sales, customer success, and partner teams.
  • Contribute to the organization’s security strategy and roadmap by participating in cross-functional planning sessions and aligning security initiatives with product and engineering roadmaps.
  • Collaborate with engineering, platform and operations teams to translate security requirements into actionable engineering tasks and acceptance criteria.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies to ensure security work is prioritized, scoped and delivered as part of normal development flow.
  • Assist in procurement and evaluation of new security tools or services, prepare business cases and coordinate pilot programs to validate tool fit and integration complexity.
  • Create and maintain runbooks, playbooks and standard operating procedures for common security operations tasks to ensure consistent incident handling and onboarding of new security staff.
  • Support corporate communications on security matters and help craft customer-facing security documentation, whitepapers, FAQs and compliance artifacts.
  • Provide mentorship and ad-hoc training to cross-functional teams on practical secure development and operational practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Deep knowledge of information security frameworks and standards: ISO 27001/27002, SOC 2, NIST CSF, CIS controls, PCI-DSS.
  • Hands-on experience with cloud security for AWS, Azure and/or GCP including IAM, VPC design, security groups, KMS, and cloud-native logging/monitoring.
  • Proficiency with identity and access management (SAML, OIDC, OAuth2), PAM solutions, single sign-on, and lifecycle management.
  • Strong experience with vulnerability management tooling and processes (Qualys, Nessus, Tenable, Rapid7) and application security tools (SAST, DAST, SCA).
  • Practical knowledge of security operations and detection tooling: SIEM (Splunk, ELK, Sumo Logic), EDR (CrowdStrike, Carbon Black), and SOAR platforms.
  • Solid understanding of secure software development lifecycle (SDLC), DevSecOps practices, CI/CD integration (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI) and IaC security (Terraform, CloudFormation).
  • Knowledge of encryption, key management, PKI, TLS lifecycle, and data protection techniques for in-transit and at-rest data.
  • Experience conducting threat modeling, architecture reviews and penetration testing coordination; familiarity with common attack vectors and mitigation strategies.
  • Proficiency evaluating and managing third-party and vendor security risk including questionnaire platforms (e.g., BitSight, SecurityScorecard, SIG).
  • Strong audit and compliance skills: preparing evidence for auditors, remediation management and report generation for SOC 2/ISO audits.
  • Familiarity with container and orchestration security (Kubernetes, Docker), runtime threat detection, and supply chain security controls.
  • Practical experience with endpoint management, DLP, network security devices and secure remote access solutions (VPN, ZTNA).
  • Ability to design and implement security telemetry and observability to support threat detection, forensics and continuous monitoring.

Soft Skills

  • Strategic thinker with strong business acumen: able to translate security risks into business impact and recommended investments.
  • Excellent communicator and presenter: able to explain technical security concepts to non-technical stakeholders and customers.
  • Proven leader and people manager: experience building, mentoring and retaining a security team while fostering cross-functional collaboration.
  • Strong problem-solving and analytical skills: comfort leading investigations, prioritizing competing demands and making decisions under pressure.
  • Customer-facing orientation: able to respond professionally to customer security inquiries, technical due diligence and RFPs.
  • Change agent and influencer: able to drive adoption of secure-by-design practices across engineering and product teams.
  • High integrity and sound judgement handling sensitive information and coordinating breach notification and legal compliance.
  • Project management and organizational skills: manage multiple security initiatives, audits and tooling projects simultaneously.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Cybersecurity, Information Security, Computer Science, or MBA with significant technical experience.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Information Systems
  • Electrical/Computer Engineering
  • Risk Management / Business Continuity

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 7 - 12+ years in information security, including at least 3–5 years in a lead or managerial role overseeing security programs.

Preferred:

  • Prior experience leading cross-functional security teams in SaaS, cloud-native, or highly regulated environments.
  • Hands-on track record with incident response, compliance audits (SOC 2, ISO 27001), and building secure development practices.
  • Professional certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCSP, CRISC, or relevant vendor certifications (AWS Security Specialty) are strongly preferred.
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