For recruiters and hiring managers
Cybersecurity and compliance leadership, at a glance
Quick facts, the security operations, GRC, and leadership requirements I see in most job descriptions mapped to my evidence, and a summary you can paste into your notes.
Quick facts
- Experience
- 20+ years across IT infrastructure, data center operations, cybersecurity, and compliance
- Target roles
- Director or Senior Director of Security & Compliance, VP or Head of Security, Head of GRC, CISO
- Company stage
- Startups and growth stage companies; enterprise experience too
- Location
- Atlanta, GA. Open to remote US, or hybrid in Atlanta
- Work type
- Full time
- Availability
- Available now
- dave@davembrown.info
- Most recent role
- Director, Security & Compliance at a multi site data center provider (2019 to 2026), reporting to the COO
- Scope led
- Multimillion dollar annual security spend and a security team of 4; earlier, infrastructure teams of 20 to 50 and a $2.5M+ budget reporting to the CEO
- Security disciplines
- Security operations, SIEM and XDR, incident response, vulnerability management, penetration testing, endpoint and identity, cloud, physical and OT security
- Service management
- ITIL incident and change management, incident command, Change Advisory Board, Jira
- Security tools
- ArmorPoint SIEM, Cynet XDR, SentinelOne, Sophos, Tenable, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Entra ID, Hoxhunt, Drata
- Frameworks
- SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HITRUST e1, HIPAA, NIST 800-171, CMMC readiness
- Education
- Coursework in Technology Management and Computer Engineering, Southern Polytechnic State University
- Credentials
- ITIL v3 Foundation. CISSP and CISM exams targeted for Q1 2027
- Employers and references
- Employer names and references available on request
Fit check
What the job description asks for, and my evidence
The responsibilities that show up most often in Director, Head of Security, and CISO postings, in recruiters' own words.
Cybersecurity and security operations
- Detection and response, SIEM and XDRImplemented company wide SOC as a Service with SIEM and XDR coverage, monitored 24x7. It contained 100+ phishing and human error incidents over five years, with zero major security incidents in nine years. Security
- Vulnerability managementRan continuous scanning with Tenable and reported open findings and fix times to the COO every month. Mean time to remediate stayed under one month.
- Penetration testingRan regular penetration testing alongside vulnerability management, as part of the incident response and resilience program I led.
- Endpoint and identity securityEndpoint protection with SentinelOne and Sophos; device management and identity through Microsoft Intune and Entra ID.
- Incident response readiness, playbooks, and tabletop exercisesEstablished the Emergency Incident Response Team and Business Continuity Plan, with quarterly IR and DR scenario tests and tabletops. Try one
- Incident management and major incident commandIncident commander at a data center provider and a global industrial enterprise: ran escalation plus customer and internal communication, with a post incident review and root cause analysis for every incident. Accountable for both IT and security incident processes.
- Change management and CAB (ITIL)Wrote the ITIL change management policies and ran the weekly Change Advisory Board at both companies, reviewing every Method of Procedure and backout plan. No change or incident exceptions across eight SOC 2 Type II reports. Try the CAB tabletop
- Security architecture and standardsWrote the baseline cybersecurity standards and security architecture for a new data center company, starting with its first facility.
- Cloud security (AWS)Cut AWS spend $25K a month through better cloud configuration and security optimization, and reinvested it in DR as a Service with a 15 minute RTO and RPO.
- Security awareness and human riskCut repeat phishing mistakes 75% in 10 months with targeted, automated training, and the requirement applied to leadership too.
- Physical, data center, and OT securityPhysical security Basis of Design for 10 new data centers, plus OT standards for network segmentation, secure vendor access, and SCADA access.
- Business continuity and disaster recoveryWrote the Disaster Recovery Plan and BCP, and tested both with quarterly scenario exercises.
Governance, risk, and compliance
- Own the end to end security and compliance programBuilt a data center provider's security, compliance, and risk program from the first policy on, over nine years. Results
- Executive owner of SOC 2 Type II and HITRUSTEight consecutive clean SOC 2 Type II reports covering security, availability, and confidentiality. HITRUST e1 certification and HIPAA BAA support for healthcare customers.
- NIST 800-171, CMMC, and CUI environmentsScored 109 of 110 on an independent NIST 800-171 assessment, with the SSP and POA&M managed in house.
- Primary contact for auditors, assessors, customers, and partnersCustomer facing security and compliance leader across RFPs, due diligence, audits, and major contracts, meeting with hundreds of customers and investors.
- Track risk and drive remediation to completionBuilt monthly risk and control reporting for the COO covering vulnerabilities, fix times, and underperforming compliance areas.
- Manage customer and vendor security questionnairesAutomated questionnaire and RFP responses with GRC tools, and moved audit evidence to a GRC platform, saving about 90 hours of audit prep.
- Vendor and third party riskLed vendor risk assessments and negotiated contracts worth about $800K in savings over three years, partnering with Legal.
- AI governanceWrote the AI usage policy and AI security risk review process, and led a restricted enterprise LLM pilot that expanded company wide.
Leadership
- Report risk to executive leadershipBuilt and ran monthly risk and control reporting for the COO. Reported directly to the CEO as VP of Global IT Infrastructure, where I functioned as CISO.
- Build and lead a security teamLed the data center provider's security team, and earlier led infrastructure and operations teams of 20 to 50 engineers through mergers and offshore restructuring.
- Startup or high growth experienceEarly team member at a data center provider that grew from its first facility to a multi site portfolio. Ran its network and data center operations before leading security.
Ready to paste
Candidate summary
Plain text for your ATS notes or a hiring manager email.
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