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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Information Security Officer

💰 $ - $

Information SecurityCybersecurityRisk & Compliance

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking a seasoned Information Security Officer (ISO) to lead and operationalize our information security program. The ISO will design, implement, and maintain technical and governance controls to protect enterprise assets, support compliance requirements (ISO 27001, NIST CSF, SOC 2, GDPR, PCI DSS), drive risk-based decision making, oversee incident response and vulnerability management, and partner across IT, engineering, legal, and business units to embed security-by-design. This role combines hands-on technical oversight with policy governance, vendor risk management, audit readiness, and continuous improvement.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Information Security Analyst or Senior SOC Analyst
  • Network/Security Engineer or Systems Administrator with security responsibilities
  • IT Audit or Risk Analyst specializing in security and compliance

Advancement To:

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

Lateral Moves:

  • Security Architect
  • Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) Manager
  • Privacy Officer / Data Protection Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Develop, maintain and continuously improve a comprehensive enterprise information security program and roadmap aligned to business objectives, including policies, standards, procedures, and technical controls that reduce risk and improve resilience.
  • Lead enterprise risk assessments (asset, threat, vulnerability and third-party risk) and translate results into prioritized remediation plans, risk treatment decisions, and executive reporting tied to business impact and risk appetite.
  • Establish and manage an incident response program (IRP) including playbooks, detection/use-case development, tabletop exercises, escalation matrices, post-incident root cause analysis, forensics coordination and rapid containment/remediation strategies.
  • Oversee vulnerability management processes — scheduling, scanning (internal/external), prioritization using CVSS and business context, coordination with engineering for patching, and validating remediation effectiveness.
  • Serve as the primary point of contact for information security governance and compliance activities (ISO 27001 implementation/maintenance, SOC 2 readiness and audits, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS), ensuring audit evidence readiness and remediation tracking.
  • Design and maintain identity and access management (IAM) controls and processes (provisioning, role-based access control, privileged access management, access reviews) to mitigate insider and privilege escalation risks.
  • Lead cloud security strategy and operations across public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), including secure architecture reviews, cloud configuration hardening, cloud-native logging/monitoring, and IaC security guidance.
  • Define security architecture and secure-by-design principles; review proposed architectures and major projects for security risks and enforce secure coding/dev practices within the SDLC (including static/dynamic analysis and dependency scanning).
  • Implement and operationalize security monitoring and detection capabilities (SIEM tuning, log aggregation, EDR/XDR deployment, threat intelligence ingestion, anomaly detection) to shorten detection and response times.
  • Coordinate vendor and third-party risk management (security questionnaires, contract clauses, penetration test requirements, continuous monitoring) to ensure supply chain security and contractual compliance.
  • Run regular security awareness and training programs (phishing simulations, role-specific training, executive briefings) to reduce human risk and cultivate a security-minded culture across the organization.
  • Develop, track and report security KPIs and metrics (MTTR for incidents, time-to-patch, number of critical vulnerabilities, audit findings closed) to the executive team and board with clear risk narratives and remediation timelines.
  • Manage security budget, vendor relationships (MSSP, MDR, cloud security partners), and procurement decisions to deliver best-fit security controls within financial constraints.
  • Lead or support penetration testing and red team activities, validate remediation and ensure findings are integrated into continuous improvement and secure engineering practices.
  • Coordinate business continuity, disaster recovery and backup strategies from an information protection perspective, ensuring security controls remain effective under incident and crisis scenarios.
  • Maintain relationships with legal, privacy and compliance teams to ensure data protection, breach notification and regulatory responses are coordinated and defensible.
  • Represent information security in mergers, acquisitions and major contracts — conduct security due diligence, integration planning, and remediate identified risks during onboarding.
  • Advise product and engineering teams on secure development lifecycle (SDLC) requirements, threat modeling, API security, data classification, encryption standards and secure configuration baselines.
  • Create and maintain data protection controls — encryption key management, tokenization strategies, DLP/EDR policies and classification-driven access restrictions to protect regulated and sensitive data.
  • Drive continuous improvement by staying current with threat landscape, attacker techniques, and emerging security technologies; propose roadmap updates and pilots to improve posture.
  • Prepare for and lead external audits and regulatory assessments, craft executive-level responses to audit findings, and ensure timely closure of remediation items.
  • Mentor and build security team capability; define roles, responsibilities, training plans, and succession planning to scale security operations with the organization.

Secondary Functions

  • Provide ad-hoc security guidance to product, marketing and business stakeholders responding to new initiatives, feature launches or regulatory inquiries.
  • Conduct security reviews and sign-offs for new vendor engagements, proof-of-concepts and cloud service onboarding.
  • Support legal and privacy teams with breach notifications, data subject access requests and cross-border transfer controls when incidents impact regulated personal data.
  • Maintain and test runbooks and disaster recovery playbooks; participate in cross-functional incident response and business continuity exercises.
  • Prepare and present quarterly security posture briefings and board-ready narratives highlighting trends, residual risk and investment priorities.
  • Assist in the creation and maintenance of a security knowledge base, runbooks and internal how-to documentation for IT and developer teams.
  • Coordinate with HR on background check standards, employee exit access revocation processes and insider risk mitigation policies.
  • Support metric-driven security initiatives such as reducing mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) and mean-time-to-respond (MTTR) through tooling and process improvements.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Information security governance & program management (ISO 27001 implementation, NIST CSF alignment, SOC 2 readiness and continuous controls monitoring).
  • Risk assessment and risk treatment planning with experience using qualitative & quantitative risk frameworks and risk registers.
  • Incident response, digital forensics and crisis management: playbook development, tabletop facilitation, evidence handling and post-incident reporting.
  • Vulnerability management and remediation orchestration across cloud, on-prem and hybrid environments; familiarity with tools such as Qualys, Nessus, or Rapid7.
  • Cloud security expertise (AWS/Azure/GCP): cloud-native security controls, IAM, secure networking, CSPM, and IaC scanning (Terraform/CloudFormation).
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM & PAM): SSO, RBAC, least privilege, enterprise directory integrations and privileged access controls.
  • Security operations and SIEM/EDR platforms (Splunk, Elastic, Azure Sentinel, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne) and detection engineering practices.
  • Penetration testing, red team operations, secure code review and familiarity with SAST/DAST tools and DevSecOps integration.
  • Data protection controls: encryption (at rest/in transit), KMS, DLP, tokenization, and key lifecycle management.
  • Third-party/vendor risk management and contractual security reviews including SOC reports and attestations.
  • Regulatory compliance knowledge: GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOX; experience preparing audit evidence and remediation plans.
  • Secure architecture and threat modeling including application security best practices, API security, and microservices hardening.
  • Business continuity and disaster recovery planning with an emphasis on protecting data and maintaining secure operations during outages.

Soft Skills

  • Clear executive communication and board-level presentation skills: translate technical risk into business impact and decision-ready recommendations.
  • Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional influence — able to coordinate IT, Legal, HR, Product and Finance to implement security controls.
  • Leadership and team-building — hiring, mentoring, and developing security practitioners and allied teams.
  • Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills: synthesize complex technical data into prioritized action plans.
  • Project and vendor management skills: manage multiple initiatives, deadlines and external partners to successful completion.
  • High attention to detail and commitment to compliance, auditability and documentation.
  • Crisis calm under pressure: lead incident response confidently while coordinating technical and business recovery.
  • Training and coaching aptitude: develop programs that change behaviors and raise security awareness across the company.
  • Negotiation and influencing: secure budget, policy adoption and executive sponsorship for security investments.
  • Ethical judgment, integrity and an understanding of privacy/data protection obligations and sensitivities.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, Engineering or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree in Cybersecurity, Information Assurance, Business Administration (with security focus) or related advanced technical degree.
  • Formal training in risk management or governance (e.g., ISO 27001 Lead Implementer/Auditor courses).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science / Software Engineering
  • Cybersecurity / Information Assurance
  • Information Systems / Network Engineering
  • Risk Management / Business Administration

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10+ years of progressively responsible information security experience, including governance, incident response, vulnerability management and stakeholder leadership.

Preferred:

  • 8–12+ years in enterprise security roles with proven leadership of security programs, cross-functional initiatives and audit/compliance processes.
  • Prior experience in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, SaaS, e-commerce) or large-scale cloud-first environments.

Certifications (highly desirable)

  • CISSP, CISM, CISA, CRISC or equivalent security certifications.
  • ISO 27001 Lead Implementer/Auditor, PCI QSA, GIAC certifications, or cloud security certifications (AWS Certified Security, Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer, GCP Professional Cloud Security Engineer).
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