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

Charles River Associates•Toronto, ON

2d•CA$140,000 - CA$190,000•Hybrid

About The Position

CRA’s Forensic Services practice supports companies’ commitment to integrity by assisting them and their counsel in independently responding to allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and non-compliance. We are noted for deploying cross-trained teams of forensic professionals to assist our clients in gaining deeper insights and greater value more quickly. We provide accounting and forensic services as well as cybercrime investigation services. 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
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.
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.
NIST Cybersecurity Framework (primary)
Supporting frameworks such as CIS Benchmarks, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and HITRUST
Strong working knowledge of: 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.
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.
Broad understanding of core cybersecurity domains, including: Ability to connect these domains into a comprehensive security program narrative
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.
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

Certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CISA, PMP, or similar

Responsibilities

Lead and participate in client-facing assessments, including interviews, workshops, and executive readouts.
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.
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.