Howard Stone

Leads cross-functional cybersecurity response initiatives to contain, mitigate, and document security incidents across enterprise environments. Serves as the operational and communication bridge between technical responders, executive leadership, and third-party stakeholders to ensure rapid, compliant, and well-documented resolution.

Key Responsibilities:
Directs all phases of the incident response lifecycle, including triage, containment, eradication, and recovery, aligning with NIST and ISO 27035 frameworks.
Coordinates 2448 hour containment operations, ensuring timely network isolation, account lockdowns, forensic evidence preservation, and validation of containment success.
Manages task assignment, escalation protocols, and communication flow among SOC, IT, legal, and vendor partners.
Oversees incident documentation, including extended-hours logs, out-of-scope work tracking, and daily SITREP updates for compliance and audit readiness.
Validates asset and user inventories, access controls, and backup/snapshot integrity to support recovery planning.
Tracks remediation projects and post-incident corrective actions through to completion, ensuring alignment with security policy and SLA expectations.
Develops playbooks, checklists, and communication templates to streamline future responses and improve organizational resilience.
Partners with leadership to produce after-action reports, root cause analyses, and executive summaries with actionable recommendations.
Integrates lessons learned into security awareness programs, tabletop exercises, and policy updates.
Core Competencies:
Incident Response Management Cybersecurity Operations Project Lifecycle Leadership Risk Assessment NIST/ISO Frameworks Crisis Communication Technical Documentation Compliance & Audit Support Stakeholder Coordination Post-Incident Recovery Planning

Built and launched new QA department, cutting incident escalations by 60% and increasing support consistency by 45%.
Defined and enforced SOPs, KPIs, and incident management processesraising customer satisfaction 75% and ensuring 95% of change initiatives stayed on schedule.
Optimized support workflows, reducing issue resolution time by 40%.
Drove a 20% compliance boost in 90 days via organization-wide change management.

Led full-scope cloud security migrations (Microsoft Purview, DLP, HIPAA/PII compliance) for major enterprise clientsachieved 98%+ customer satisfaction.
Authored project documentation and SOPs aligned with Agile, streamlining adoption of security tools across multiple organizations.
Acted as key liaison between engineering, client teams, and executives, ensuring end-to-end delivery of secure cloud infrastructure.