CSOC Lead Analyst

Peraton•Portland, OR

About The Position

Position is Contingent Upon Award Peraton seeks innovative professionals who thrive in mission-critical environments and are passionate about protecting our national critical infrastructure. This is your chance to make an impact on one of the nation’s vital organizations, working alongside leaders in cybersecurity engineering, operations, forensics, threat analysis, data science, and systems integration. Join Peraton in supporting a large critical infrastructure operator to defend its corporate and operations networks from nation-state attacks, ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its systems and operations infrastructure, and comply with federal and industry cybersecurity regulation. As a lead analyst in a 24x7x365 Cybersecurity Operations Center (CSOC), the position provides leadership of CSOC shift staff to monitor the company’s networks and systems using Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) systems such as Splunk, CrowdStrike, Nessus Security Center, Axonius, Swimlane, Websense, NetFlow and other tools to identify and investigate anomalies and thwart cyberattacks. Duties include analyzing security alerts, leading investigations, assessing threats, and implementing procedures to respond to incidents as a senior member of the company’s CSOC.

Requirements

U.S. Citizenship Required
Must have the ability to obtain / maintain a DOE L Level or DOE Secret clearance
Degree in computer science, engineering, cybersecurity, information technology, or related field
Minimum of 8 years experience with BS/BA; Minimum of 6 years with MS/MA; Minimum of 3 years with PhD
Cybersecurity experience in roles such as security monitoring, threat and risk assessment, incident response, forensic analysis, offensive testing, controls assessment, vulnerability research or CSOC operations
Understanding of industry cybersecurity standards such as FISMA, NIST 800 series, and regulatory compliance requirements
Demonstrated strategic thinking, CSOC operations leadership, or broad understanding of risk management
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to investigate and assess security risks
Excellent verbal and written communications skills
Ability to communicate technical issues to both infrastructure owners and management
Must be able to work on a 4-month 24x7x365 shift rotation schedule

Nice To Haves

Hold cybersecurity certification such as CISSP, CISM, SSCP, GIAC GSEC, OSCP, CEH, CISA SSCP, GIAC GCIH (GCIH), EC-Council CSA
A master’s degree in computer science, engineering, cybersecurity, information technology, or related field

Responsibilities

Lead a CSOC shift to monitor security reporting systems, dashboards and indicators of suspicious activity and unauthorized access for an extensive critical infrastructure covering 8 states
Validate SIEM/EDR/SOAR security alerts, open case management investigations and direct analyst staff investigations
Review open case management reports, progress investigations, assess potential risks and determine issue priority and escalation path
Review threat and vulnerability advisories issued by various government organizations
Conduct research to determine the applicability of advisories to the operator environment
Interact with internal Subject Matter Experts and functional groups to request information, discuss events, escalate issues and coordinate a response
Formulate mitigation recommendations and document investigations
Prepare shift reports and brief CSOC Manager, infrastructure stakeholders and corporate management on active investigations
Conduct open source research and stay abreast of the latest cyber threats and security tools
Perform network and systems analysis of intrusion alerts to the network infrastructure and anomalous traffic, applications, operating systems, firewalls, proxy devices and malware detection, security incidents or anomalies flagged by monitoring tools, triage, and escalate them as warranted
Perform in-depth security analysis of alerts from firewalls and reviewing system logs for suspicious patterns, perform preliminary incident response, event analysis and threat intelligence
Investigate threats across multiple data systems and create incident review cases on notable events
Investigate flagged alerts, determine if they are real threats, and follow designated response and containment procedures
Confirm continuous data flows from system logs, PCAP captures, and intelligence feeds into the SIEM systems
Review flagged events that are detrimental to the company’s overall security posture; analyze and detect sophisticated and nuanced attacks, discern false positives and draft reports of results for management
Correlate network and system sensor events
Conduct advanced forensic event investigation of logs and network protocol traffic and identify anomaly and potential threats
Provide near real-time and short-term correlation of data collected by the SIEM/EDR tools and investigate threats across data types over specific study time frames or systems
Provide strategic analysis and near real-time auditing, investigating, reporting, and coordinating tracking of security-related flagged incidents
Analyze intelligence feeds from systems, other analysts, and outside agencies, and integrate learnings into protection devices
Recommend changes to security assets such as firewalls, VPNs, to remediate issues or improve defensive posture to CSOC and security management
Review and process cybersecurity alerts and threat intelligence feeds and notifications provided by external government agencies and cybersecurity organizations, evaluate and recommend internal distribution as warranted
Assist with CSOC daily tasks and operations such as CSOC communications, completeness and fidelity of CSOC reports, and status of incident cases as directed by management
Recommend new and improved SIEM/EDR threat indicators