Peraton

Job Summary
Scope:
This engagement requires a contract for a position for 1 year at 40 hours per week. The Cybersecurity Analyst will play an important role to continuously monitor, triage alerts and tickets, investigate suspicious activity or poor configurations, and orchestrate responses to protect the laboratory's systems and data. Typical tasks may include:

• Resetting user passwords for cause (e.g., when they have been identified as being suspected compromised or 'known compromised')
• Working with service owners to reset service account passwords for various reasons
• Ensuring authorizers are designated for in-scope accounts
• Analyzing usage patterns for accounts (e.g., service, administrative) to identify inactive accounts or inappropriate account use
• Reviewing approval requests for various new access or accounts
• Triaging unusual access requests (e.g., access from 3 rd party VPN providers, impossible travel) or phishing reports
• Evaluate endpoint and detection response (EDR) installation and coverage.
• Identify systems without EDR and provide to IT teams for remediation.
• Monitoring external attack surface for unapproved systems, undocumented systems, and newly disclosed vulnerabilities
• Reviewing systems with existing public access to ensure requirements for these systems are followed (e.g., event logging, multifactor authentication)
• Attend online/Teams meetings with team and others as appropriate
• Work with team to provide status on current task, suggest improvements, discuss implementation, etc.

You will be expected to use a variety of tools to perform the above tasks, including ServiceNow, CrowdStrike, and Splunk

Objectives:
The ideal candidate will support the projects and tasks associated with the Cybersecurity Program.

Technical Direction of Work:
Report to the Deputy Chief Information Security Officer within the Business & Information Services division; including daily guidance and collaboration with others in the Cyber Security Program Office (CSPO).

Expectation/Deliverables:

A candidate is expected to:

• Analyze data and perform initial planning to address identified issues.
• Assist with the creation of playbooks to address identified issues.
• Seek to understand the intention of detections and corresponding playbooks.
• Execute various playbooks dealing with identified issues with minimal assistance (e.g., identification of compromised passwords, inappropriate use of administrative accounts, systems not providing event logs, systems without a functional EDR installed).

An improved candidate would also:

• Adapt on-the-fly when an existing playbook is insufficient.
• Provide basic feedback on playbooks and detections.
• Produce clear reports (MTTD/MTTR, FP rate, backlog) for technical and executive audiences; maintain thorough case notes.
• Recommend additional new use cases for detections based on an analysis of threats and data.
• Identify telemetry quality and visibility issues (SIEM parsing/normalization, EDR/XDR sensor health, asset/identity tagging).

An excellent candidate would also:

• Conduct proactive threat hunts; convert findings into new detections and control recommendations.
• Create advanced use cases for detections based on an analysis of threats and data, including sample criteria to identify the behavior and mapping detections to MITRE Telecommunication&CK
• Drive continuous improvements to existing processes or tooling.
• Perform quality reviews and improve handoffs/runbooks.
• Coach, guide, teach others on the team.
• Lead investigations end-to-end (triage to containment), delivering timelines, root cause, scope, IOCs, and impacted assets.
• Execute/coordinate containment and remediation (host isolation, credential resets, blocks) with proper approvals and verification.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 1–3 years in a SOC, cybersecurity 'blue team', or closely related role.
• Strong grasp of TCP/IP, OSI model, and common protocols (HTTP, DNS, SMTP). Windows/Linux/macOS fundamentals; Active Directory/Azure AD concepts; basic cloud logging.
• Experience with at least one SIEM and one EDR/XDR platform.
• Experience with ticketing/case management.
• Ability to craft queries using common languages; comfort with regex, JSON and APIs; basic scripting in Python/PowerShell/Bash.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills both with stakeholders, peers, and internal customers; able to operate under pressure in a shift or on-call environment.

Preferred Additional Qualifications

• 3–5 years relevant experience including investigations, data analysis, and detection tuning.
• Comfort using Splunk Processing Language (SPL), CrowdStrike EDR, and ServiceNow.
• Experience with SOAR tools and automation development.
• Experience using identity security/management tools (e.g., Entra ID, Active Directory, Shibboleth, CrowdStrike Identity Protection).
• Cloud security experience (e.g., CloudTrail/GuardDuty, Azure Defender/M365, GCP Security Command Center).
• Basic forensics skills and network analysis fundamentals (host triage, timelines, artifact analysis, packet/PCAP review).
• Understanding of the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) and NIST 800-53 controls.

Relevant certifications (nice to have): Security+, CySA+, SSCP; Microsoft SC-200/AZ-500; Splunk Core/Enterprise Security; GIAC (GCIH, GCIA, GCFA, GCTI); cloud provider security certs.

Experience—

• Experience in system and network administration.
• Staying up to date with the latest cybersecurity threats, vulnerabilities, and best practices.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Meticulous attention to detail to ensure thorough assessments and accurate reporting.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to effectively convey findings and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to work collaboratively with other cybersecurity professionals, IT staff, and external vendors.
• Considerable knowledge/experience of assessing security controls.
• Experience and skill in conducting audits or reviews of technical systems.
• Experience working in a government environment.
• Experience working in a distributed IT environment.
• Ability to qualify for HSPD-12 card for use in two-factor authentication.
• Able to work both independently and as a contributing member of a small technical team
• Able to disseminate knowledge to current staff.

Job Type: Contract

Pay: $50.00 - $65.00 per hour

Expected hours: 40 per week

Benefits:

• Life insurance

Work Location: Remote