Senior Associate/Cybersecurity Consultant Due Diligence Advisory (Forensic Services practice)

Charles River Associates • Chicago, TX

23d • Hybrid

About The Position

CRA is seeking a Cybersecurity Consultant (Assessments / Due Diligence / Advisory) to support client engagements focused on evaluating and managing cybersecurity risk. In this role, you will lead and participate in client-facing assessments, including interviews, workshops, and executive readouts, while operating with a high degree of independence and confidence. You will be responsible for translating client discussions into clearly defined engagement scopes and Statements of Work (SOWs), aligning deliverables with frameworks such as the NIST CSF and transaction-specific objectives. This includes the ability to assess cybersecurity posture in transaction and investment contexts, distinguish material risks from broader program maturity gaps, and tailor findings to the needs of private equity, legal, and executive stakeholders. The role includes executing cyber due diligence and proactive security assessments through documentation review, stakeholder interviews, and control evaluation. The role may also support incident readiness reviews, tabletop exercises, and broader cyber resilience assessments to help clients evaluate preparedness, decision-making, and recovery capabilities before or after a cyber event. The role will also work closely with CRA’s incident response team to identify recurring risk themes and control gaps from active and recently closed matters, and help translate those observations into follow-on proactive engagements including gap assessments, tabletop exercises, resilience reviews, and broader security uplift efforts. This position requires producing high-quality, client-ready reports that include prioritized findings, risk-based recommendations, and executive-level summaries. You will also support senior team members in proposal development and business development efforts, while bridging technical cybersecurity findings into clear business risk narratives for legal, private equity, and executive audiences. You will also contribute to the development of repeatable assessment methodologies, templates, and client-facing deliverables across CRA’s proactive cybersecurity service offerings. The ideal candidate demonstrates a strong advisory mindset, the ability to independently manage client conversations, and the capability to connect multiple cybersecurity domains—including identity and access management, endpoint security, vulnerability management, backup and recovery, email security, and asset management—into a cohesive and defensible security program assessment. The ideal candidate should also be able to translate technical observations into clear business, legal, and transaction-oriented risk narratives for executive and client stakeholders.

Requirements

• Approximately 5–7 years of experience in cybersecurity consulting, advisory, or due diligence
• Comfortable leading discussions with CIOs, IT Directors, and legal stakeholders
• Strong ability to guide conversations, ask structured questions, and manage meetings effectively
• Excellent executive communication skills with clear, concise, and unambiguous delivery
• Experience drafting or contributing to Statements of Work (SOWs), engagement letters, and proposals
• Ability to translate loosely defined client needs into structured deliverables and timelines
• Strong commercial awareness, including understanding scope boundaries and identifying opportunities to expand engagements
• Ability to tailor scopes and findings to transaction, diligence, or investment-focused objectives, including identifying issues that are likely to be material to legal, private equity, or executive decision-makers.
• Impeccable written communication skills, including grammar, structure, and formatting
• Ability to produce logically consistent, defensible findings and recommendations
• Experience delivering polished, client-ready cybersecurity risk reports
• Ability to prioritize findings based on business impact, articulate critical versus lower-priority issues, and develop executive-ready narratives that support practical decision-making.
• Strong working knowledge of NIST Cybersecurity Framework (primary)
• Supporting frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and HITRUST
• Ability to map controls, identify gaps, and translate findings into business risk and impact
• Ability to evaluate how controls operate together across governance, identity, endpoint, cloud, recovery, and monitoring layers as part of a broader security program or resilience assessment.
• Broad understanding of core cybersecurity domains, including: Identity & Access Management (e.g., Active Directory, Entra ID), Endpoint security (e.g., EDR/MDR solutions such as CrowdStrike), Vulnerability management tools (e.g., Tenable, Qualys), Backup and recovery strategies (RTO/RPO, immutability), Email security (phishing protection, DMARC, MFA), Asset inventory, device management, and patch lifecycle practices
• Comfort reviewing supporting documentation such as security policies and standards, architecture diagrams, control evidence, recovery procedures, and technical configurations in order to assess design and operating effectiveness.
• Ability to connect these domains into a comprehensive security program narrative
• Strong organizational and time management skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams simultaneously
• High level of ownership, attention to detail, and ability to deliver work independently with minimal oversight
• Ability to help develop reusable assessment content, templates, and client-ready materials that support scalable proactive service delivery across multiple engagement types.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting cyber resilience assessments, incident readiness reviews, tabletop exercises, or related preparedness-focused engagements is a plus.
• Experience collaborating with incident response, forensic, or crisis management teams to translate post-incident observations into proactive assessment, readiness, or remediation-focused engagements is a plus.
• Exposure to tools such as CrowdStrike, Tanium, Microsoft 365, Azure/Entra ID, and AWS. Ability to evaluate and interpret tooling deployment, configuration, and coverage in an advisory context rather than operate as a dedicated implementation engineer.
• Certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CISA, PMP, or similar

Responsibilities

• Lead and participate in client-facing assessments, including interviews, workshops, and executive readouts.
• Operate with a high degree of independence and confidence.
• Translate client discussions into clearly defined engagement scopes and Statements of Work (SOWs).
• Align deliverables with frameworks such as the NIST CSF and transaction-specific objectives.
• Assess cybersecurity posture in transaction and investment contexts.
• Distinguish material risks from broader program maturity gaps.
• Tailor findings to the needs of private equity, legal, and executive stakeholders.
• Execute cyber due diligence and proactive security assessments through documentation review, stakeholder interviews, and control evaluation.
• Support incident readiness reviews, tabletop exercises, and broader cyber resilience assessments.
• Evaluate client preparedness, decision-making, and recovery capabilities before or after a cyber event.
• Work closely with CRA’s incident response team to identify recurring risk themes and control gaps.
• Translate observations into follow-on proactive engagements including gap assessments, tabletop exercises, resilience reviews, and broader security uplift efforts.
• Produce high-quality, client-ready reports that include prioritized findings, risk-based recommendations, and executive-level summaries.
• Support senior team members in proposal development and business development efforts.
• Bridge technical cybersecurity findings into clear business risk narratives for legal, private equity, and executive audiences.
• Contribute to the development of repeatable assessment methodologies, templates, and client-facing deliverables across CRA’s proactive cybersecurity service offerings.
• Connect multiple cybersecurity domains into a cohesive and defensible security program assessment.
• Translate technical observations into clear business, legal, and transaction-oriented risk narratives for executive and client stakeholders.

Benefits

• medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan with employer match
• life and disability insurance
• paid time off (vacation, sick leave, holidays)
• paid parental leave
• wellness programs and employee assistance resources
• commuter benefits
• in-house immigration support for foreign nationals and international business travelers

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed