Specialist, Future Operations and Response Team (FORT), Cybersecurity Operations

The Opportunity 

• Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130- year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare.  

• Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.  

• Drive innovation and execution excellence. Be a part of a team with passion for using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making, and which creates custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world's greatest health threats.  

Our Technology Centers focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our company’s IT operating model, Tech Centers are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy.  

A focused group of leaders in each Tech Center helps to ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in growth, success, and well-being of our people, to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging to managing critical emergencies. And together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centers.  

Role Overview 

As a part of our Company's Cyber Fusion Center (CFC), the Future Operations and Response Team (FORT) is responsible for proactively driving remediation of cyber security risks across our IT and OT infrastructure, leading the CFC’s external engagement, and establishing the CFC’s governance framework to ultimately reduce attack surface and maintaining proactive cybersecurity posture. 

The FORT Specialist will collaborate with external and internal stakeholders across international technical centers to maintain our Company’s proactive cyber security posture. They are responsible for the actioning of IT/OT cyber security operations including, but not limited to, vulnerability remediation, vulnerability scanning activities, network firewall hygiene, stakeholder engagement, metrics reporting, governance, and communications. The FORT Specialist works with security operations teams, information technology teams, network teams, enterprise risk management teams, decision-makers, industry peers, and private/public sector intel sharing groups. 

Key responsibilities: 

• Tracks vulnerabilities and misconfigurations for IT on-premises and cloud infrastructure and engages stakeholders to drive proactive remediation of time-sensitive vulnerabilities in accordance with our internal vulnerability prioritization and vulnerability remediation SLAs 

• Supports network firewall hygiene efforts to ensure firewall rules are well maintained and are locked down in a secure manner  

• Communicate frequently and effectively with many stakeholders and cross-functional teams on vulnerability and misconfiguration remediation 

• Responsible for stakeholder engagement and remediation leveraging the ServiceNow Vulnerability Response module, including full process ownership 

• Conducts routine and scheduled vulnerability scanning of critical assets, applications, and infrastructure 

• Monitors and actions reported vulnerabilities by ethical hackers --this includes engagement with internal and external stakeholders to remediate the identified vulnerabilities 

• Supports effective cyber security governance, metrics, and reporting for Cyber Fusion Center 

• Implement strategies to identify, analyze, and mitigate vulnerabilities in our environment. 

• Work with key stakeholders to improve vulnerability management processes. 

• Improve the new ServiceNow VR module by working directly with teams to ensure that all enhancements are brought to the team’s attention and provide guidance to improve processes. 

• Work in ServiceNow on tickets assigned to our team requesting Database, Website, and Asset vulnerability scans. 

• Have an understanding of Security Operation Center (SOC) activity and be able to respond to cyber security incidents. 

• Identify potential process and product improvements and drive follow-on activities. 

Position Qualifications: 

Education Minimum Requirement: 

• BA/BS or MA/MS in either Computer Science, Information Security, Information Systems, Cyber Security, or other related fields. 

• Certifications: (not required, but preferred) CISSP, CISA, CCNA, CCNP, Security+, OSCP. 

Required Experience and Skills: 

• 3+ years of experience in one or more of the following areas: 

• Vulnerability Management 

• Network Operations 

• Cyber Incident Response 

• Penetration Testing 

• Experience understanding of Cloud infrastructure 

• Excellent verbal and written communications skills. 

• Experience with cloud and on-premises vulnerability/misconfiguration remediation 

• Experience supporting Network Firewalls, ensuring firewall rules are secure and well maintained 

• Experience working with ticketing tools like SeviceNow 

• Experience working with MDR solutions like Red Canary 

• Experience working Cloud Security Posture Management tools like Wiz 

• Experience working with large data sets, using tools and scripting languages within Excel, Python, Microsoft Sentinel, and Power BI. 

• Demonstrated ability to work independently and as part of global teams in a fast-paced global environment. 

• Demonstrated ability to drive projects to completion and identify ways of improvement 

Who we are:  

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.  

What we look for:  

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.