Central department recruits for senior IT security-focused positions

Credit: Werner Moser/Pixabay

The Cabinet Office is seeking to appoint two senior IT security professionals: a chief information security officer; and a cyber defence lead.

The CISO will assume overall responsibility for the department’s cyber strategy, as well as leading its response to security breaches and other incidents. The postholder will sit at the head of a team charged with securing the GOV.UK website, which is used millions of times each week by citizens accessing services and information. Also under their watch will be the security of the new One Login digital identity system to be rolled out over the next three years, and the Cabinet Office-led Official IT platform through which officials can share classified government data.

The position comes with a salary of up to £120,000 and will be based in one or more of the department’s sites in London, Manchester, and Bristol. Applications are open until 11.55pm on 13 October.

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The cyber defence lead, meanwhile, will spearhead a specialist team that is “responsible for defending both internal IT infrastructure and citizen-facing services”, according to the job advert. The unit provides a range of security services across the department’s operations, including “cyberthreat intelligence, threat detection, incident response, and vulnerability management capabilities”.

Applications are open until 30 October and the successful candidate will earn up to £77,900 a year. 

The hiring process for both posts is being managed by recruitment firm Allen Lane.

In the candidate pack for the CISO role, Cabinet Office chief digital and information officer Michael Hill said that cyber professionals play a key role in supporting the department’s wider technology transformation objectives.

“Within CDIO we are transforming ourselves to be even more effective and efficient in the way we service our users’ requirements,” he said. “This exciting transformation programme will shape the organisation, our ways of working, our engagement model and our ‘delivery engine’, enabling CDIO to become a user-centric organisation; delivering on behalf of our users through a highly matrixed portfolio of projects and programmes.”