Ministry of Justice ups salary for CISO role in a bid to flush out qualified candidates

New job ad with higher salary of up to £117,800 for MoJ CISO

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has re-opened applications for the role of chief information security officer (CISO), upping the salary on offer to £117,800, in a bid to flush out qualified candidates.

The MoJ had published a job advert for the role back in September for a CISO, pinning a salary of up to £90,000 on the role, alongside the usual public sector benefits.

Now, the MoJ has shifted the salary range for the post to be between £67,500 and £117,800. The MoJ declined to comment on the recruitment process, but the assumption is that the previous salary range offered failed to attract strong enough candidates.

The CISO will be a deputy director at the MoJ, and part of the digital and technology senior leadership team. The post holder is expected to "bring together diverse teams and ways of working, to deliver new and demanding business priorities and transform how services are delivered".

According to the advert, the chosen candidate will need to lead and inspire their immediate team and wider stakeholders to deliver a challenging strategy and future vision of transforming customer service.

There is no mention of information security in this particular advert, but in the previously advertised role, the MoJ said the person would be responsible for adapting and renewing the department's information security strategy and reporting on the status of information security across the department.

It also said they would advise agencies on building federated information security teams and provide leadership for those, while assuring the security of information across all digital and technology services.

The candidate information pack goes into further detail about the role responsibilies, these include:

• Leading a team of around 20 security professionals;
• Ensuring security-by-design in the delivery of technology;
• Managing relationships within the cyber security community; and,
• Collecting and reporting the status of information security across the MoJ.

Candidates must have the ability to read and understand code and configuration in order ot unearth details behind the causes of incidents or vulnerabilities. They must also have an understanding of modern IT such as public cloud, agile delivery methodologies and emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, distributed ledgers and big data.

The deputy director will report to the MoJ's chief digital and information officer, Tom Read.