Information Assurance Specialist

Responsibilities

• Security Baseline Implementation: Implement, manage, and enforce robust security baselines and benchmarks such as CIS Benchmarks and Azure Foundations across enterprise endpoints and server infrastructure.

• Microsoft Group Policy (GPO): Technical expertise to support and audit Active Directory Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to enforce least privilege, disable insecure legacy protocols, and harden on-premises Windows environments.

• Microsoft Intune Policy Management Configuration: Experience translating traditional GPOs into modern cloud management frameworks using Microsoft Intune Settings Catalogs, Administrative Templates, and Endpoint Security configurations.

• Compliance Mapping & Governance: Aligning technical configuration baselines directly with overarching Information Assurance (IA) frameworks, ensuring that GPO and Intune policy maps cleanly to auditable compliance controls.

• Risk Identification & Assessment: Ability to identify, evaluate, and categorize security risks within organizational systems by analyzing technical configurations against established frameworks (such as NIST SP 800-30 or FedRAMP risk assessments).

• Guide stakeholders in determining and integrating baseline security requirements, advise on viability of alternative approaches. 

• Propose remediation/mitigating controls and recommendations to stakeholders and management to minimize risk. 

• Lead security team engagements to build and mature processes to produce written Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) with a focus on improvement to FERC’s Information Assurance processes, methodologies, and communication methods. 

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 3-5 years of relevant work experience with network engineering and/or system administration background (Unix/Linux/Windows).  
• Framework Alignment: Minimum of 3–5 years of experience aligning infrastructure with NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 or FedRAMP security control frameworks.
• Infrastructure Hardening: Proven track record authoring and deploying hardening guidance using CIS Benchmarks including Azure Foundations.
• Policy Management: Technical proficiency understanding and managing Microsoft Group Policy Objects (GPOs) and Microsoft Intune configuration policies.
• Network & Endpoint Security: Strong understanding of cloud networking architecture, including NSGs, VNet segmentation, Azure Firewall, WAF, and Private Link.
• Identity & Governance: Strong understanding of Azure RBAC policies, configuring logging/monitoring solutions, and implementing data protection mechanisms.
• Skilled in authoring, testing, and debugging Azure Policy definitions and blueprints to automatically enforce configuration benchmarks (like CIS Azure Foundations) across subscriptions.
• Direct experience utilizing Microsoft Defender for Cloud and its Regulatory Compliance dashboard to monitor and report on security posture
• Ability to articulate ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences through excellent written and oral communication skills. 
• Ability to independently collect, review, and evaluate IT product data to identify and characterize security threat sources of concern and provide recommendations to Government leadership.  
• Experience securing infrastructure within Microsoft Azure or Azure Government environments.
• Must possess a valid baseline security certification (e.g., CompTIA Security+, CISSP, CEH, or DoD equivalent).
• Ability to obtain Public Trust Clearance