The DHS Hunt and Incident Response Team (HIRT) secures the nation’s infrastructure. HIRT provides DHS’s front-line response for cyber incidents and proactive hunting for malicious cyber activity. Nightwing provides support for on- and offsite incident response to government agencies and critical infrastructure owners who experience cyber-attacks. Nightwing delivers HIRT advanced technical assistance, proactive hunting, rapid onsite incident response, and immediate investigation using host- and network-based cybersecurity analysis capabilities. Personnel perform investigations to characterize the severity of breaches and develop mitigation/remediation plans.
Nightwing is seeking a Network Forensics Analyst with deep expertise in one or more edge device technologies (Cisco, Ivanti, Palo Alto, Ciena, Juniper) to support this critical customer mission.
Responsibilities:
• Serves as a hunt and incident response subject matter expert (SME), applying in-depth knowledge of threat actor tools, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), with a focus on network centric and edge device compromises.
• Serves as an incident response expert in support of a technology insertion team, evaluating and integrating new network forensic and monitoring capabilities.
• Assists the Government lead in coordinating teams for preliminary incident response investigations, including onsite and remote engagements.
• Assists the Government lead by interfacing with the customer while onsite, clearly communicating status, findings, and recommendations.
• Characterizes and analyzes network traffic (including PCAP, flow, and device logs) to identify anomalous activity and potential threats to network resources.
• Identifies and analyzes anomalies in network traffic using metadata (e.g., flow records, DNS logs, proxy logs) to detect and scope malicious activity.
• Reconstructs malicious attacks or activities based on network traffic, including timelines, attacker paths, and data exfiltration patterns.
• Examines network topologies to understand data flows, trust boundaries, and potential choke points; uses this understanding to inform hunt and response activities.
• Assesses network topology and device configurations, identifying critical security concerns and providing security best practice recommendations, especially for Cisco, Ivanti, Palo Alto, Ciena, and Juniper platforms.
• Determines appropriate courses of action in response to identified and analyzed anomalous network activity, including containment, eradication, and hardening actions.
• Applies knowledge of defense-in-depth principles and general attack stages to evaluate and improve network security architecture and edge-device configurations.
• Applies knowledge of network device integrity concepts and methodologies to validate device state, detect unauthorized modification, and recommend remediation.
• Leads analysis of device logs, configurations, and telemetry from routers, switches, firewalls, VPNs, and remote access appliances to identify, scope, and reconstruct intrusions.
• Provides expert support, analysis, and research with only broad direction into exceptionally complex problems and processes relating to hunt and incident response activities.
• Serves as a technical expert on high-level incident response teams, providing technical direction, interpretation, and alternatives for network-centric incidents.
• Exercises considerable latitude in determining technical objectives and independently develops technical solutions to complex problems requiring ingenuity and creativity.
• Analyzes incident data and victim environments to recommend targeted mitigations, including network segmentation, policy updates, and device hardening.
• Advises technical personnel on countermeasure implementation and customization (e.g., firewall rules, IPS signatures, access control lists).
• Supports internal stakeholders on containment and eradication missions, on-site and remotely.
• Ensures evidence integrity is…