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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Cybersecurity Officer

💰 $ - $

SecurityITCompliance

🎯 Role Definition

The Cybersecurity Officer is a senior, hands-on security leader responsible for protecting the organization's information assets, implementing and operating security controls, and driving risk- and compliance-focused initiatives. This role blends technical expertise (SIEM, endpoint protection, cloud security, vulnerability management) with governance, risk management and stakeholder communication. The Cybersecurity Officer identifies threats, leads incident response, matures security operations (SOC) and ensures alignment to regulatory frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and GDPR. This position reports to senior IT or risk leadership and is expected to influence security strategy, delivery and continuous improvement across people, processes and technology.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Security Analyst / SOC Analyst
  • Cybersecurity Engineer / Network Security Engineer
  • IT Auditor or IT Risk Analyst

Advancement To:

  • Cybersecurity Manager / Head of Information Security
  • Director of Security / Director, Information Risk
  • Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

Lateral Moves:

  • IT Risk Manager
  • Compliance Officer / Data Privacy Officer
  • Security Consultant / Penetration Testing Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead the design, implementation and continuous improvement of the enterprise information security program, ensuring alignment with business objectives, regulatory requirements and industry best practices (NIST CSF, ISO 27001, CIS controls).
  • Develop and maintain information security policies, standards and procedures; ensure policies are communicated, enforced and periodically reviewed for relevance.
  • Manage and operate security monitoring and detection capabilities (SIEM tuning, log ingestion, alert triage) to detect, investigate and escalate security incidents rapidly.
  • Serve as an incident commander or key responder in security incidents — lead incident response plans, containment, forensic evidence collection, root cause analysis and lessons-learned activities.
  • Conduct regular vulnerability management and remediation programs, including vulnerability scanning, asset discovery, prioritization of findings and coordination with engineering/ops teams to remediate critical risks.
  • Oversee identity and access management (IAM) and privileged access controls, including access reviews, least-privilege enforcement, SSO, MFA adoption and privileged account management solutions.
  • Design and validate security architecture for cloud and hybrid environments (AWS, Azure, GCP), including secure network segmentation, cloud-native controls, IaC reviews and container security.
  • Implement and maintain endpoint protection and EDR solutions; develop detection content and playbooks for advanced threats and ransomware.
  • Develop and run threat hunting and threat intelligence programs to proactively identify adversary activity, integrate threat feeds and adjust detection strategies.
  • Lead third-party and vendor security assessments, contract security reviews, due diligence and remediation tracking to manage supply chain risk.
  • Coordinate and lead security awareness and training programs for all employees and targeted role-based training for developers, admins and executives.
  • Manage security testing activities (red team, penetration testing, application security testing) and drive remediation of discovered weaknesses with engineering and product teams.
  • Partner with privacy, legal, audit and compliance teams to support GDPR, CCPA, PCI DSS and other regulatory obligations; prepare and respond to internal and external audits.
  • Establish KPIs, dashboards and executive reporting to communicate security posture, program progress, incident metrics and risk trends to stakeholders and the board.
  • Lead security architecture reviews and threat modeling workshops for new products, major releases and high-risk changes.
  • Create and maintain Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery security components; ensure security controls are resilient and recoverable after incidents.
  • Manage security budgets, procurement of security tools and vendor relationships to ensure best-fit solutions and cost-effective operations.
  • Mentor, hire and develop security staff and SOC analysts; build a high-performing security operations capability and foster a security-first culture.
  • Ensure secure software development lifecycle practices are integrated with DevOps pipelines, including SAST/DAST tooling, secret scanning and secure code reviews.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of threat landscape, emerging vulnerabilities and attacker TTPs; translate this intelligence into actionable improvements.
  • Conduct risk assessments for new initiatives, applications and infrastructure changes; produce risk treatment plans and drive remediation to acceptable risk levels.
  • Oversee data protection and encryption strategies, including key management, data classification, loss prevention and backups to protect sensitive data at rest and in transit.

Secondary Functions

  • Prepare evidence, documentation and executive summaries for internal and external audits, regulatory assessments and compliance attestations.
  • Support ad-hoc security data requests, reporting for stakeholders and cross-functional teams; provide context and recommendations based on security telemetry.
  • Contribute to security strategy, roadmap and investment prioritization; align security initiatives with business goals and technology roadmaps.
  • Collaborate with engineering, product, IT operations and legal to translate business requirements into secure design and implementation requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning, change advisory boards and agile ceremonies to represent security concerns and minimize release risk.
  • Support business continuity testing, tabletop exercises and incident simulation activities to validate readiness across the organization.
  • Coordinate with regional teams and third-party incident response vendors when managing multi-jurisdictional incidents or escalations.
  • Maintain playbooks, runbooks and documented processes for repeatable detection, containment and remediation activities.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Security program design and governance: policy development, control frameworks (NIST, ISO 27001, CIS).
  • Incident response and digital forensics: IR playbooks, evidence preservation, forensic tool usage and chain-of-custody processes.
  • SIEM and log management: architecture, rule tuning, use-case development and tools such as Splunk, Elastic Stack, QRadar or Azure Sentinel.
  • Vulnerability management and scanning tools: Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7; risk-based prioritization and patch coordination.
  • Endpoint protection and EDR platforms: CrowdStrike, Carbon Black, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint; detection and containment workflows.
  • Network security and perimeter controls: firewalls, IDS/IPS, secure network segmentation and VPN technologies.
  • Cloud security: AWS/Azure/GCP security controls, IAM, security groups, KMS, cloud-native logging and monitoring.
  • Identity and access management (IAM): SSO, MFA, RBAC, privileged access management and access review processes.
  • Application security fundamentals: SAST/DAST, secure coding practices, threat modeling and API security.
  • Scripting and automation: Python, PowerShell or Bash for automation of detection, response, and remediation tasks.
  • Data protection and encryption: key management, DLP, tokenization and secure storage best practices.
  • Regulatory and compliance knowledge: GDPR, PCI DSS, SOX, HIPAA and SOC 2 implications for technical controls.
  • Penetration testing and red team familiarity: understanding of adversary TTPs and ability to interpret pentest findings.
  • Security architecture and design review experience for enterprise systems and cloud-native applications.

Soft Skills

  • Clear, persuasive communication skills for explaining technical risk to non-technical stakeholders and executives.
  • Strong leadership and team development skills; ability to mentor analysts and create a collaborative security culture.
  • Stakeholder management and influencing skills to drive remediation and secure design changes across engineering teams.
  • Analytical problem-solving and attention to detail when triaging incidents and performing root cause analysis.
  • Prioritization and decision-making under pressure during incidents and competing risk demands.
  • Project management acumen to deliver security initiatives on time and within budget.
  • Continuous learning mindset to stay current with threats, tools and controls.
  • Ethical judgment, discretion and ability to handle sensitive/confidential information.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Security, Cybersecurity, Information Systems, or a related technical field — or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Cybersecurity, Information Assurance, Computer Science, Business Administration (with security focus) or related advanced degree.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Security / Cybersecurity
  • Information Systems
  • Network Engineering
  • Risk Management

Recommended Certifications (preferred but not required):

  • CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
  • CISM (Certified Information Security Manager)
  • CRISC (Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control)
  • CEH / OSCP / GPEN (technical offensive security certs)
  • CompTIA Security+ / CySA+ (foundational)
  • cloud provider certs (AWS Security Specialty, Azure Security Engineer)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–8 years of progressively responsible experience in cybersecurity, security operations, incident response or risk and compliance roles.

Preferred: 7+ years with substantial hands-on experience in SOC operations, incident response, vulnerability management, cloud security and a track record of leading cross-functional security initiatives. Prior experience managing teams, interacting with executive leadership and supporting audits/regulatory compliance is highly desirable.

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