Senior Manager-Head Group Security Operation Centre at Equity Bank Kenya

Role Summary

The Head of Group SOC will be responsible for the management of the Inhouse local SOC and the Offshore SOC. He/ she will lead a team of cyber security professionals within a 24/7 security operations center, that rapidly monitors, analyzes, identifies, contains and resolves information security incidents in all Equity systems across the markets we operate in.

The Head of SOC ensures all incidents are handled as quickly as possible, according to industry best practices, and in concert with Equity Policies, Business Units, and Technology Teams. This role requires a transformational leader who will shape the future of response at Equity, leveraging threat hunting, metrics, automation, and machine learning to detect and respond at scale and instantly across all Equity environments.

Job Responsibilities

• This is a senior management role responsible for managing the Security Operations Centre (Inhouse and Outsourced), detecting, responding to and managing security incidents to protect the Group’s Information assets.
• Formulate and develop the Security Operations Framework including SOC processes, policies and procedures.
• Build, develop and manage a Security Operations Centre.
• Manage all day to day activities within the Security Operations Centre to ensure effective operation of threat detection and prevention.
• Provide leadership, guidance and technical expertise in running of a SOC.
• Ensure the Bank’s security detection, protection, response, and recovery procedures are up to date, tested maintained and followed.
• Be accountable of the security incident management.
• Ensure proper integration and handover of new security services within the monitoring and detection capability of the SOC.
• Ensure continuous SOC services improvement.
• Set-out key security performance indicators that ensures proper service delivery and service improvements
• Develop and maintain SOC related policies, procedures and processes to ensure all necessary information and security data is continuously being collected, correlated and analysed to detect potential external and internal threats to the organization.
• Develop metrics needed to communicate risk levels to the organization and articulate the value derived from the SOC Services to the Group.
• Develop and provide reports on a regular basis to meet management, compliance or audit needs
• Collaborate with relevant internal stakeholders including security, Risk, Operations, IT, NOC, etc. to ensure appropriate security incident management and threat response processes are in place and maintained.

Knowledge and Experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology, Information Security/Assurance, Engineering or similar area of study
• Hold at least one relevant industry certifications (GCIH, GCED, CISSP, CISA, CISM, etc.)
• Understanding of SIEM tools such as Splunk, ArcSight, RSA, McAfee ePO, etc.
• Experience building and maintaining a high performance team of analysts.
• Expertise with industry standard frameworks (ISO, NIST, PCI).
• Experience maintaining metrics and SLAs.
• Minimum 5 years Security management, with experience building long-term career development plans for team members at all levels.
• Proficient in Incident Management and Response
• Experience in security device management and SIEM
• In-depth knowledge of security concepts such as cyber-attacks and techniques, threat vectors, risk management, incident management etc.
• Experience in threat management
• Knowledge of various operating system flavors including but not limited to Windows, Linux, Unix
• Knowledge of applications, databases, middleware to address security threats against the same.
• Knowledge of a number of the following: Strong Authentication, End Point Security, Internet Policy Enforcement, Firewalls, Web Content Filtering, Database Activity Monitoring (DAM), Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Identity and Access Management (IAM).
• Ability to effectively provide briefing to the business stakeholders regarding ongoing security incidents and threat Levels.
• Experience in managing a multi-Tier SOC team including training, shift schedules performance reviews and attendance
• Experience in managing and maintaining relationships within an organisation, with vendors and customers.

Key Critical Competencies

• Proficient in preparation of reports, dashboards and documentation
• Excellent communication and leadership skills
• Experience in performing vendor management
• Ability to handle high pressure situations with key stakeholders
• Good Analytical skills, Problem solving and Interpersonal skills
• Deep knowledge of Bank’s infrastructure, networks and systems