Senior Security Architect
Bahrain
Full Time
Experienced
Job Purpose
The Senior Security Architect will play a key role in building and maintaining IT security solutions and controls for the Bank across new and emerging domains, including Cloud and Innovation. The role will involve developing end-to-end security for Bank ABC and handling any technical problems that arise. The Senior Security Architect will identify IT threats and vulnerabilities, design and build robust security architectures and serve as the “security point person” for technical and business security concerns.
The job holder will be architecting and managing change and implementation with existing and new technologies, reusing when appropriate and implementing when required.
The job requires in-depth knowledge and hard skills (e.g. secure cloud architecture, cryptographic practices, protocols, network and platform security etc.) as well as strong soft skills (e.g. communication and presentation skills, stakeholder management) and a good amount of hands-on previous work experience demonstrating these.
Principal Responsibilities, Accountabilities and Deliverables of Role
Research & Planning:
Cost, Planning, Project Management:
The Senior Security Architect will play a key role in building and maintaining IT security solutions and controls for the Bank across new and emerging domains, including Cloud and Innovation. The role will involve developing end-to-end security for Bank ABC and handling any technical problems that arise. The Senior Security Architect will identify IT threats and vulnerabilities, design and build robust security architectures and serve as the “security point person” for technical and business security concerns.
The job holder will be architecting and managing change and implementation with existing and new technologies, reusing when appropriate and implementing when required.
The job requires in-depth knowledge and hard skills (e.g. secure cloud architecture, cryptographic practices, protocols, network and platform security etc.) as well as strong soft skills (e.g. communication and presentation skills, stakeholder management) and a good amount of hands-on previous work experience demonstrating these.
Principal Responsibilities, Accountabilities and Deliverables of Role
Research & Planning:
- Plan, research and design robust enterprise-wide security architectures for any IT or business projects aligned with industry frameworks (e.g. SABSA, TOGAF, NIST, CSA, ISO 27001)
- Develop threat use cases / scenarios to clearly depict threats to security architecture.
- Aligning new security solutions with existing technologies and designing and planning integration.
- Lead and coordinate assessment of existing and target / implemented architecture.
Cost, Planning, Project Management:
- Prepare cost estimates and identify integration issues for solutions and architectures
- Develop and maintain security reference architectures and roadmaps
Engineering:
Designing:
Implementation:
Testing & Assessments:
Training & Knowledge share:
Governance:
Strategies:
Incident Management:
Architecture Documentation:
Product Responsibilities:
Key Responsibilities:
Note: Candidates should possess a solid understanding of security solutions and demonstrate effective problem-solving skills to ensure the seamless operation and integration of the security tools and solutions.
- Understanding of Security Engineering outputs and able to oversee and incorporate into security planning
- Able to incorporate security measures into the existing, resultant or target architecture.
- Collaborate with DevOps, Cloud, and IT teams to embed security into CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure (DevSecOps)
Designing:
- Define and maintain technical security patterns for secure systems and applications
- Design high level and low-level security architecture to meet business and technical requirements
- Design public key infrastructures (PKIs), including use of certification authorities (CAs) and digital signatures
- Identify and reuse security solutions and consider integration with other tools when designing security solutions.
Implementation:
- Coordinating the installation of security solutions and managing the configuration of said solutions.
- Identifying opportunities to automate processes and activities and coordinating implementation of automation.
- Identifying gaps in architecture and addressing these gaps through defining security requirements based on threat landscape / assessment.
Testing & Assessments:
- Coordinate the testing of security solutions
- Conduct threat modelling, risk assessments, and security architecture reviews.
Training & Knowledge share:
- Expert knowledge in cryptography and Cloud Security solutions and able to research and understand new solutions.
- Expert knowledge of, and hands on experience in, securing AWS, Azure and GCP.
Governance:
- Define, implement and maintain corporate security policies and procedures
- Monitor issues / remediation activities to ensure gap closure to fulfil security control objectives and meet mandatory external requirements.
- Be informed of changes to industry best practices, changes in architecture (e.g. Cloud) and work with third parties, vendors and the wider bank to design relevant security controls.
- Coordinate with other members of Group IT, Cyber & Information Security, and end user departments to sustain appropriate technical and procedural controls to support the industry mandatory security objectives.
Strategies:
- Develop and own a security strategy and deliver end-to-end including planning and roadmap development.
Incident Management:
- Support incident response and security operations by providing architectural insights.
Architecture Documentation:
- Design and develop high level security architecture documents.
- Develop architecture patterns to address multiple / differing use cases.
- Develop and enhance Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs) and Solution Building Blocks (SBBs) and design architectures mapping to these building blocks
- Write comprehensive reports including documenting existing architecture and defining baseline and target architecture in terms of components, integration and capabilities, and aligning with business requirements.
- Prepare and document standard operating procedures and protocols.
- Prepare technical and business architecture documentation, as per the defined frequency, and keep it in a clear way to support the Bank and ensure it remains compliant all year round.
- Work in a team environment to educate and analyse security architectures and help develop other activities for reviewing and monitoring mandatory security controls.
Product Responsibilities:
- Will be the Product Owner, supporting the senior security architect in Product Owner responsibilities regarding specific security tools under the remit of the team.
- Will be the Product Owner for Microsoft security solutions with hand-on experience of MS Purview, Azure, AWS Security stack and security solutions, ensuring correct configuration, issues identified and resolved, develop processes/procedures and follow up on alerts
- Will be the Product Owner for HSM solution, ensuring correct configuration, issues identified and resolved, develop processes/procedures and manage associated activities (key life cycle management)
- Will be the Product Owner for Microsoft AIP solution, ensuring correct configuration, issues identified and resolved, develop processes/procedures and manage associated activities (classification labelling, handling DLP alerts)
- Will be the Product Owner for Bluecoat proxy / Fireglass solution, ensuring correct configuration, issues identified and resolved, define policies, develop processes/procedures and manage associated activities.
Key Responsibilities:
- Product Ownership & Collaboration:
- Support the Senior Security Architect as the Product Owner for specific security tools within the team’s domain.
- Microsoft Security Solutions:
- Serve as the Product Owner with expertise in:
- MS Purview, Azure Cloud, Active Directory, Defender, O365 Security and Microsoft AIP solutions
- Ensure proper configuration and timely resolution of issues
- Develop and implement effective processes and procedures
- Good knowledge of activities and solving challenges relating to classification, labeling, and handling Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
- Continuously monitor and follow up on security alerts
- Serve as the Product Owner with expertise in:
- HSM Solution Management:
- Oversee the Hardware Security Module (HSM) as Product Owner:
- Ensure accurate configuration
- Identify and resolve issues efficiently
- Develop and manage processes and procedures
- Responsible for key lifecycle management
- Oversee the Hardware Security Module (HSM) as Product Owner:
Note: Candidates should possess a solid understanding of security solutions and demonstrate effective problem-solving skills to ensure the seamless operation and integration of the security tools and solutions.
Job Requirements
Knowledge
Knowledge
- Strong understanding of Cloud Computing Security, including AWS, Azure, Office 365, APIs and WEB services
- Strong knowledge in designing and implementing cryptographic solutions including PKI infrastructure, certificate management and deploying encryption technologies for systems, databases, applications across on-premises and cloud
- Understanding of Information Security frameworks (e.g., ISO 27001/27002, NIST CSF, CIS TOP 20)
- Deep knowledge of network, application, cloud and data security best practices
- Understanding of architecture frameworks (e.g. TOGAF, SABSA)
- Good knowledge and hands-on experience in security systems, including CASB, HSMs, web proxies and content filtering, DLP solutions, etc
- Detailed technical knowledge of operating system and Cloud CIS baseline
- Good knowledge of low-level and high-level security architecture design and development
- Good understanding of security design patterns
- Familiarity with regulatory and compliance requirements (e.g., CBB, GDPR, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, SOC2)
- Broad understanding of the Information Security domains: Infrastructure Security, Access Management, Physical Security, Application Security, Security Compliance, and IT Change Management
- University degree with an IT and / or Cyber Security background
- Recognized and active Information Security and platform qualifications (e.g., CISSP, CISM, EC Council or SANS related certifications, AWS or other cloud specific certifications).
- Desirable Certifications: GIAC Defensible Security Architecture
Experience
- At least 8 years of work experience
- 3+ years of direct hands-on experience on configuring technical security solutions and working with Cloud Service Providers (including Azure, Office 365 and AWS) ideally within financial services
- Experience with threat modelling tools and methodologies (e.g., STRIDE, DREAD, MITRE ATT&CK)
- Experience in working with cryptographic solutions (e.g. HSM)
- Experience in developing high level architecture for the cloud and hands-on experience designing secure architectures in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Strong understanding of IAM, MFA, authentication protocols (OAuth, SAML, OpenID Connect) and able to configure well known Security Solutions in this domain.
- Experience in securing APIs, containers and microservices
- Experience with network security and networking technologies and with system, security, and network monitoring tools
- Recent, full-time working experience with financial institutions
- Practical experience on working with cloud technologies and implementing security in hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios.
Personal attributes
- Strong team player
- Fluent in English (mandatory)
- Ability to organise and prioritise tasks
- Able to conduct the role with minimum supervision
- Strong communication skills capable of dealing with wide range of internal and external stakeholders articulating security risks in business-friendly terms.
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