Cybersecurity and Digital Infrastructure Specialist - Remote

Cybersecurity and Trusted Digital Infrastructure Specialist - Remote

• Arlington, VA

Opportunity track:
MENA-EE
Engagement:Contingent individual consultant; engagement may be direct or through an eligible U.S. consulting firm
Location:Remote — United States, with possible international travel
Primary promotion location:Arlington, Virginia 22201
Anticipated consulting fee:$150–$325 per hour, or a negotiated fixed price by work package

Axyde is building a senior expert bench for anticipated U.S. government-funded project-scoping assignments involving government, utility, telecommunications, cloud, data-center, smart-city, industrial, transportation, and other critical-infrastructure cybersecurity programs across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Eurasia, and adjacent markets.

The selected specialist will help Axyde determine whether proposed cybersecurity and trusted-digital-infrastructure initiatives address credible risks, have an appropriate governance and technical basis, reflect realistic institutional and workforce capacity, possess an implementable acquisition and operating pathway, and are ready for a feasibility study, technical-assistance assignment, pilot, or capacity-building program.

Assignments may begin with incomplete data and require rapid, independent, and defensible conclusions. Axyde welcomes specialists whose principal strength is governance, enterprise security, cloud security, telecommunications security, operational technology, critical-infrastructure protection, security operations, incident response, identity, zero trust, or supply-chain security. Applicants are not expected to be equally expert in every cybersecurity domain.

This is an authorized project-scoping and defensive advisory role. It does not include unauthorized system access, penetration testing, exploit development, credential collection, covert activity, or handling classified or otherwise restricted information unless separately authorized in writing and supported by all required controls.

• Assess cybersecurity objectives, threat and risk context, organizational maturity, governance, institutional capacity, operating model, workforce, and implementation readiness.
• Evaluate enterprise, cloud, telecommunications, data-center, industrial-control-system, operational-technology, and critical-infrastructure security concepts at an appropriate project-scoping level.
• Review proposed identity and access management, privileged-access management, zero-trust, network segmentation, endpoint, email, data-protection, encryption, logging, monitoring, vulnerability-management, backup, and recovery capabilities.
• Evaluate security-operations-center, national or sectoral computer-security incident-response, threat-information-sharing, incident-response, digital-forensics, and cyber-exercise concepts without requesting live credentials, exploitable vulnerability details, or restricted operational data.
• Assess cyber resilience, business continuity, disaster recovery, ransomware preparedness, third-party risk, software and hardware supply-chain security, and trusted-vendor requirements.
• Evaluate security considerations for cloud migration, sovereign cloud, data centers, 5G and telecommunications, smart cities, utilities, power systems, transportation, and other connected infrastructure.
• Review policies, authorities, institutional roles, procurement approaches, data governance, privacy, cross-border data, localization, regulatory, standards, and oversight considerations at a project-scoping level without providing legal advice.
• Assess alignment with relevant frameworks and standards, such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST security controls, zero-trust guidance, ISO/IEC 27001, IEC 62443, or sector-specific requirements, as applicable.
• Evaluate training, certification, retention, organizational-change, public-awareness, and institutional-capacity requirements.
• Develop or independently review preliminary architecture, capability, staffing, licensing, lifecycle-cost, CAPEX, OPEX, schedule, procurement, implementation, and sustainment assumptions.
• Develop or review technical tasks, required qualifications, deliverables, schedules, and budgets for feasibility studies, technical assistance, pilots, maturity assessments, architecture studies, institutional-development programs, and workforce initiatives.
• Compare technical and implementation alternatives and identify…