Background

Open Briefing prevents and responds to serious attacks on the people and organisations fighting for peace, human rights, and environmental justice around the world, and works to create the conditions in which they no longer happen.

Our ‘holistic security’ support empowers human rights defenders and other activists and organisations to remain active and effective in local movements.

As a social enterprise, we also provide consultancy, training, and retained support to help charities and foundations understand and meet their risk management and duty of care commitments to staff, grantees, and local partners.

For more information, please see our #10YearsOfImpact page.

Role description

As the lead of one of our three holistic security workstreams, you will be the senior manager responsible for helping our digital security team succeed as well as playing a key role in the sustainable growth of our organisation.

You will be supporting an international, distributed team of consultants providing mentoring and capacity building to organisations and activists under threat. You will be liaising with international foundations and high-profile clients in the human rights, environmental, and humanitarian worlds. And you will be contributing to the organisational culture and strategic planning needed to grow our organisation in a sustainable manner.

As our digital security lead, you will:

1. Manage an international and multilingual team of expert consultants and trainers providing digital and information security support to clients and recipients.
2. Continuously improve and develop our digital security services and promote them to clients.
3. Process requests and manage our responses to referrals for funded support for at-risk activists and low-resource civil society organisations.
4. Respond to enquiries from NGO and foundation clients for digital security consultancy and training and liaise with them and our consultant team through any subsequent contracts.
5. Quality assure and provide expert technical input into the work of your colleagues in the digital security team.
6. Improve our internal digital security:
   1. Provide on-demand digital security advice and support to our team members.
   2. Coordinate our response to any digital security incidents or data breaches.
   3. Conduct a digital security audit using a suitable audit framework.
   4. Develop, document, and socialise a revised framework of policies and procedures that is compliant with UK GDPR and, where relevant, HIPAA.
7. Play an active role in shaping our organisational strategy and culture as part of our senior management team.
8. Providing digital security training and consultancy to clients and recipients as appropriate (contracted separately).

This is a remote consultancy role for 7 days a month for an initial six months, renewable by mutual agreement and dependent on funding and performance. In line with our other workstream leads, you will receive £400 per day and a package of psychosocial support and health and wellbeing resources. We are seeking to build a long-term working relationship with the successful candidate.

You can be based in any time zone. But you must be able to accommodate calls with colleagues and clients across the world, including outside usual office hours.

Person specification

Essential

• You will have at least three years professional experience in information or digital security in the non-profit sector.
• You will have a deep understanding of information and digital security and data protection best practices in contexts with highly-capable adversaries.
• You will be sensitive to the progressive and rights-based agendas and diverse profiles of our clients and recipients.
• You will be an excellent people manager with the ability to build, motivate, and mentor distributed consultant teams.
• You will have experience managing senior external stakeholders.
• You will have excellent project and budget management skills.
• You will have excellent written and spoken English, and be able to clearly communicate with and build understanding among colleagues and clients.

Desirable

• You may have experience with various digital security audit frameworks.
• You may have a good understanding of (UK) GDPR and/or HIPAA.
• You may have an understanding of the physical security and wellbeing aspects of holistic security.
• You may have an information security or data protection qualification.

How to apply

To apply, please email your CV to our CEO, Chris Abbott, at [email protected]. Please also include a cover letter setting out:

1. Why you are interested in the digital security lead role and Open Briefing.
2. How you meet the person specification.
3. One criticism or possible area for improvement in the digital security guidance in our Holistic Security Protocol for Human Rights Defenders.

This is an immediate need, and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The position will remain advertised until we find the appropriate candidate. Successful applicants will need to complete a reasonable vetting process before engagement.

Open Briefing values diversity. Please read our equality and diversity policy for more information. Our ethical and environmental policies are also available.