Senior Cybersecurity Operations Specialist

Overview: The client is a leading agency driving their clients' initiatives and public sector digital transformation. As the Centre of Excellence for Infocomm Technology and Smart Systems (ICT & SS), the client develops capabilities in Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, Application Development, Smart City Technology, Digital Infrastructure, and Cybersecurity. The client offers the successful candidate a purposeful career to make lives better, empowering people to master their craft through robust learning and development opportunities all year round.

The applicant must have the following prerequisites:

• Responsibilities

• Incident Management & Response Standardisation

• Unified Playbooks: Establish and maintain company-wide Incident Response (IR) playbooks for diverse threat scenarios (e.g., Ransomware, Data Exfiltration, Cloud breaches).
• Crisis Leadership: Provide direct guidance and technical oversight to agencies during High and Critical severity incidents, ensuring timely reporting and effective containment.
• Incident Governance: Work with clients to establish clear command structures and roles, empowering leaders to make difficult, high-stakes decisions during a crisis.

• Advanced Exercises: Design and oversee high-quality Tabletop Exercises (TTX) for various stakeholders. Evaluate external vendors to ensure these exercises are realistic, comprehensive, and push the firm’s limits.
• Chaos Testing: Drive the adoption of chaos testing across agencies to validate the adequacy of resiliency plans and identify hidden failure points in critical systems.
• Capability Building: Continuously assess the operational readiness of the Ministry Family and lead initiatives to bridge identified gaps in incident management.

• Centralised Monitoring: Ensure all Ministry systems are effectively onboarded to central monitoring services. Work with system owners on overcoming challenges encountered during onboarding.
• Asset Visibility: Partner with clients to maintain a robust and updated IT asset inventory, ensuring that "you cannot protect what you do not know."
• Custom Threat Scenarios: Provide expert guidance for clients with unique threat use cases or specialised systems (e.g., OT/ICS) that fall outside standard monitoring coverage, helping them build bespoke detection capabilities.

• Full-Spectrum SOPs: Establish Standard Operating Procedures for vulnerability management across on-premises, cloud (GCC), and OT environments. Ensure that there are proper procedures for managing unpatched vulnerabilities.
• Attack Surface Scanning: Ensure agencies deploy adequate internal and external scanning tools. Oversee the workflow for finding prioritisation and validate that patches are applied and effective.

• Resilience Culture: Educate agency stakeholders on the critical importance of Response and Business Continuity Planning (BCP).
• Stakeholder Inculcation: Foster a mindset of "assumed breach," ensuring project owners and agency leaders understand their roles in threat monitoring and incident management.

• Years of Experience: 8 to 10 years of deep experience in Cybersecurity Operations, SOC Management, or Incident Response.
• Crisis Management: Proven track record of leading or providing technical oversight in high-pressure, high-severity security incidents.
• Domain Expertise: Experience managing security operations across complex hybrid environments (On-premise, Cloud, and OT).

• Incident Response & Forensics: Mastery of IR methodologies and a strong understanding of digital forensics and malware analysis.
• Threat Intelligence & TTPs: Deep knowledge of the threat landscape and the ability to map monitoring use cases to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
• Vulnerability & Exploitation Research: Deep understanding of the CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) system and CVSS scoring. Knowledge of exploitation techniques and the mechanics of how vulnerabilities are weaponised by threat actors. Ability to assess the "exploitability" of a vulnerability within the specific context of the client’s environment to prioritise remediation.
• Detection Technologies: Proficiency in SIEM, SOAR, XDR, and EDR technologies. Ability to evaluate the relevancy of existing monitoring tools against evolving threats.
• Cloud Operations: Strong understanding of monitoring and responding to incidents within clients' domain.
• Certifications: Professional certifications such as GCIH (GIAC Certified Incident Handler), GCFA (GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst), CHFI, or CISSP are highly desirable.

• Command & Control: Ability to remain calm and provide clear, authoritative guidance during high-stakes security crises.
• Diplomacy & Education: Skill in translating operational needs into strategic priorities for clients.
• Strategic Foresight: A strong interest in emerging security technologies and the ability to proactively adapt monitoring strategies to counter new actor TTPs.