Director of Security & Compliance

This role is intentionally independent from Infrastructure. The Director will provide dedicated cybersecurity leadership, budget ownership, governance, escalation, and risk-based decision support while partnering closely with Infrastructure, Applications, User Support, Legal, Compliance, Finance, HR, plant leadership, and external partners.

The company is moving to a future-state global IT shared services model with a standalone Security and Compliance tower. This role closes a key cybersecurity leadership gap and provides one accountable owner for enterprise cybersecurity strategy, governance, risk reduction, incident readiness, compliance, and executive reporting. The role is critical to protecting manufacturing operations, intellectual property, customer trust, business continuity, and future scalability.

Responsibilities

Cybersecurity Strategy, Governance, and Program Leadership

• Establish and lead the enterprise cybersecurity and compliance program across global business units and manufacturing sites.
• Develop and maintain a cybersecurity strategy, operating model, governance cadence, policy roadmap, risk register, and executive reporting framework.
• Align the program to recognized cybersecurity frameworks and business risk priorities, using practical, maturity-based approaches such as NIST CSF and Zero Trust principles where appropriate.
• Define clear roles, responsibilities, escalation paths, and decision rights across Security, Infrastructure, Applications, User Support, Legal/Compliance, and business stakeholders.
• Build and lead the Security and Compliance team, including coaching two Cybersecurity Analysts and coordinating the SIEM/SOC managed service.

Security Operations and SIEM/SOC Managed Service

• Select, implement, operationalize, and continuously improve the company’s SIEM/SOC managed service.
• Define alert triage, escalation, severity classification, incident handoff, reporting, and SLA expectations with the managed service provider.
• Ensure telemetry coverage across priority sources such as endpoint, identity, network, cloud/SaaS, critical applications, and infrastructure.
• Partner with Infrastructure and Applications to improve logging, monitoring, detection, containment, and response readiness.
• Track detection and response metrics, recurring incident themes, false positives, and control gaps.

Incident Response, Resilience, and Business Continuity

• Own and mature the cybersecurity incident response program, including playbooks, tabletop exercises, breach escalation workflows, post-incident reviews, and corrective-action tracking.
• Partner with Infrastructure and business teams on disaster recovery planning for Tier 1 systems, including identity, access, monitoring, backup, cyber recovery, and communications dependencies.
• Ensure cybersecurity considerations are embedded into disaster recovery, backup testing, and business continuity planning.
• Lead major cybersecurity incident coordination in partnership with IT, Legal, HR, Communications, executive leadership, vendors, and external counsel as needed.

Identity, Access, Endpoint, and Zero Trust

• Lead identity-centric security improvements across Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, privileged access, MFA, Conditional Access, SSO, device trust, and access reviews.
• Advance Zero Trust initiatives where appropriate, including least privilege, segmentation, device compliance, identity-driven access, and continuous verification.
• Partner with Infrastructure and User Support on endpoint management, Intune, CrowdStrike, patching, device compliance, and secure configuration baselines.
• Drive privileged-access governance, joiner/mover/leaver control discipline, and periodic access reviews for critical systems.

Vulnerability Management and Security Posture Improvement

• Establish a risk-based vulnerability management program, including scanning, prioritization, remediation SLAs, exception handling, and reporting.
• Partner with Infrastructure, Applications, and plant/site teams to remediate critical vulnerabilities, unsupported systems, exposed services, configuration gaps, and segmentation issues.
• Coordinate penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, security assessments, and remediation tracking.
• Maintain dashboards showing vulnerability aging, remediation progress, endpoint coverage, MFA coverage, incident metrics, and risk trends.

Compliance, NIS2 Readiness, Vendor Risk, and Policy

• Lead NIS2 readiness activities, including gap remediation, evidence management, policy updates, incident-response readiness, supply-chain risk management, and compliance-status reporting.
• Improve vendor and third-party cybersecurity risk processes for new and high-risk suppliers, including security reviews, privacy/security provisions, remediation follow-up, and ongoing monitoring.
• Own or coordinate priority cybersecurity policies, standards, exceptions, control evidence, awareness initiatives, and security assessment processes.
• Partner with Legal, Compliance, Finance, HR, Procurement, and business leaders to embed cybersecurity into governance and enterprise risk management.

Secure-by-Design and Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline or higher
• Participate in architecture, project intake, technology selection, and major change governance to ensure security, privacy, identity, logging, resilience, and supportability are addressed early.
• Support secure integration of acquisitions, global sites, applications, identity platforms, networks, and managed-service partners.
• Communicate clearly with technical teams, business leaders, executive stakeholders, auditors, and external partners.
• Translate cybersecurity risk into business impact, practical priorities, and actionable remediation plans.

Qualifications Required

• 10+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity, information security, IT risk, security operations, compliance, or related technology leadership.
• Experience leading or materially influencing cybersecurity programs across security operations, incident response, vulnerability management, identity/access security, governance, risk, and compliance.
• Experience managing internal team members, external partners, managed security providers, or cross-functional security initiatives.
• Practical knowledge of frameworks and practices such as NIST CSF, Zero Trust, ISO 27001, CIS Controls, incident response, third-party risk management, and vulnerability management.
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft security ecosystems, identity platforms, endpoint security, SIEM/SOC concepts, EDR/XDR, MFA, privileged access, cloud/SaaS security, and network security fundamentals.
• Demonstrated ability to build executive-level cybersecurity reporting, risk registers, metrics, remediation plans, and governance routines.
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain cybersecurity risk to nontechnical stakeholders and executive audiences.
• Ability to work primarily onsite in the Chicago area near O’Hare airport, with occasional flexibility.

Preferred

• Experience in a global manufacturing, industrial, private-equity-owned, or multi-site environment.
• Experience with CrowdStrike, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, Duo MFA, Intune, Zscaler, vulnerability scanning tools, SIEM/SOC providers, and vendor-risk platforms.
• Experience with NIS2, GDPR-adjacent security requirements, EU cybersecurity expectations, or global compliance readiness.
• Familiarity with OT/industrial cybersecurity, plant operations, ERP/MES/engineering systems, or manufacturing business continuity.
• Certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CRISC, CISA, CCSP, GIAC, or similar.

Leadership Expectations

• Be the accountable security leader for the enterprise, not just a technical escalation point.
• Build trust with Infrastructure and Applications while maintaining independent security judgment.
• Lead with risk-based prioritization, business pragmatism, and measurable outcomes.
• Develop analysts into a high-performing security operations and governance team.
• Communicate early, clearly, and calmly during incidents, audits, and executive discussions.
• Balance urgency with disciplined governance, documentation, and repeatable processes.