Senior Information Security Operations Analyst

General Summary: 

The Senior Information Security Operations Analyst is a critical member of the University’s cybersecurity team, reporting directly to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Responsible for comprehensive security operations, this role focuses on proactively monitoring, analyzing, and mitigating potential cyber threats across the institution’s digital infrastructure. The analyst will leverage advanced security monitoring tools, including Sentinel (SIEM), CASB, SOAR, endpoint protection, email security, firewalls, and vulnerability management systems to detect, investigate, and respond to security incidents. Key responsibilities include developing robust incident response protocols, conducting thorough vulnerability assessments, and implementing strategic containment measures to protect university systems and data. The position demands continuous professional development and a forward-thinking approach to cybersecurity, emphasizing anticipating and neutralizing potential threats before they impact the organization’s operational integrity.

 

Examples of Duties: 

• Oversee the day-to-day activities, ensuring real-time threat monitoring, detection, and incident response, serving as the first-line primary incident coordinator at the Network and Security Operations Center (NSOC/SOC).
• Develop and enforce SOC processes, incident management workflows, and escalation procedures.
• Maintain up-to-date playbooks and ensure compliance with relevant security policies and regulations.
• Design, implement, and maintain security automation workflows to streamline security operations by leveraging Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) and custom-developed software applications.
• Automate repetitive security tasks to reduce incident response time to resolution and reduce manual workload.
• Develop scripts and playbooks to integrate, automate, and enrich data from multiple security platforms such as SIEM, IDS/IPS, EDR, firewalls, and more.
• Architect, deploy, maintain, and manage the University’s Microsoft Sentinel environment (SIEM), including configuring data connectors, log sources, workbooks, analytics rules, and playbooks.
• Conduct comprehensive daily performance evaluations of Sentinel, optimizing log ingestion processes and incident response workflows. Proactively refine threat detection mechanisms by systematically analyzing detection efficacy, false positive rates, and potential alert gaps, ensuring adaptive and precise threat identification strategies.
• Evaluate and implement cutting-edge security technologies to improve detection and response times.
• Design and deploy advanced detection rules, alerts, and signatures to identify security threats within a complex enterprise environment.
• Enhance threat intelligence ingestion efforts to develop detection strategies based on the latest threat landscapes, vulnerabilities, and attacker tactics.
• Manage real-time security event monitoring and incident response, proactively detecting threats and mitigating risks through comprehensive investigation, cross-functional coordination, and continuous improvement of security protocols.
• Serve as a liaison between the Desktop Services and Information Security teams to ensure that desktop environments comply with the University’s system security practices.
• Continuously study trends in cybercrime around threat actors’ behaviors, tactics, and goals.
• Organize and analyze the collected data from Microsoft Threat Hunting consoles, SIEMs, Tenable scanning tools, and other security services sources to investigate security trends and make predictions to eliminate current and future vulnerabilities.
• To support the University’s information security posture, analyze and report on security threats and incidents across platforms, develop performance metrics, create incident reports, maintain comprehensive documentation and audit trails, and provide strategic insights to senior leadership.
• Provide comprehensive mentorship and training to junior SOC analysts, apprentices, and students, developing and leading educational programs that enhance cybersecurity skills, threat-hunting techniques, and technical proficiency in tools like Microsoft Sentinel across internal and external learning environments.
• Provide high-level customer service and deliver timely, courteous, and knowledgeable customer support and awareness training and coaching.
• Actively supports the University in advancing the concepts of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and accessibility in the workplace.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

 

Qualifications: 

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Information Technology, or a relat