VP, Cybersecurity Operations & Architecture

WORK OPTION: The NBA currently provides eligible employees the option of working remotely one day per week.

Position Summary

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is seeking a strategic, highly collaborative, and technically credible Vice President, Cybersecurity Operations & Architecture to lead the design, operation, and continuous improvement of cybersecurity capabilities across the organization’s global technology ecosystem. Reporting directly to the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), this role serves as the senior leader accountable for integrating enterprise security architecture with day-to-day cyber defense, incident response, threat detection, and infrastructure protection.

The Vice President will establish security architecture strategy, standards, roadmaps, and reference architectures while ensuring those designs translate into sustainable operational controls, measurable detection coverage, effective response capabilities, and resilient technology services. The role will partner extensively with Cybersecurity, Enterprise Technology, Infrastructure, Engineering, Digital Products, Data & Analytics, Media Operations, Basketball Operations, Legal, Privacy, Compliance, NBA teams, arena operators, and external technology partners.

A core responsibility is setting NBA arena cybersecurity standards and making certain they are adhered to. This includes defining practical and enforceable requirements, guiding assessments and remediation, and addressing the security of arena IT, cloud-connected services, operational technology, building and display control systems, game and event technologies, broadcast dependencies, and third-party integrations.

Major Responsibilities

Cybersecurity Strategy, Leadership & Operating Model

Develop and execute an integrated, multi-year cybersecurity operations and architecture strategy aligned with business priorities, technology roadmaps, risk tolerance, and the evolving threat landscape.

Lead and mature the Cybersecurity Operations and Cybersecurity Architecture functions, establishing clear accountability, decision rights, service models, performance expectations, and escalation paths.

Serve as a trusted advisor to the CISO and senior technology leadership on cyber risk, resilience, major technology investments, crisis readiness, and strategic security priorities.

Translate cybersecurity strategy into funded roadmaps, measurable outcomes, workforce plans, vendor strategies, and prioritized improvement initiatives.

Promote a shared-ownership model in which cybersecurity is embedded into technology planning, engineering, operational processes, and business initiatives.

Enterprise Security Architecture Leadership

Establish and maintain the NBA’s enterprise cybersecurity architecture strategy, roadmap, standards, design patterns, and reference architectures in partnership with cybersecurity, infrastructure, engineering, data, product, and business technology leaders.

Lead security architecture reviews for major technology initiatives and provide pragmatic guidance that balances cybersecurity risk, operational realities, resiliency, performance, cost, and business objectives.

Develop and maintain reference architectures for cloud services, applications, infrastructure, identity, data platforms, media operations, arena technologies, operational technology, on-premises data centers, and third-party integrations.

Ensure security requirements are incorporated early in technology planning, procurement, design, development, deployment, and lifecycle management.

Provide architectural leadership for identity and access management, network segmentation, zero trust, encryption, logging, monitoring, cyber resiliency, data protection, and secure connectivity.

Represent cybersecurity in enterprise architecture, governance, design review, and technology investment forums.

Security Operations, Detection & Incident Response

Lead enterprise security operations, including continuous monitoring, threat detection, threat hunting, incident triage, containment, investigation, recovery coordination, and post-incident improvement.

Define the strategy and operating model for security information and event management, detection engineering, automation, orchestration, case management, and operational metrics.

Improve visibility across cloud, hybrid, on-premises, endpoint, identity, application, regional office, data center, arena, game, event, and broadcast environments.

Establish clear incident response roles, severity criteria, escalation protocols, executive communications, evidence handling expectations, and coordination with Legal, Privacy, Communications, business continuity, and external partners.

Lead readiness planning and cyber support for marquee events, games, broadcasts, and other high-visibility business operations, including tabletop exercises and scenario-based testing.

Drive continuous improvement through after-action reviews, lessons learned, control validation, and remediation tracking.

Cloud, Infrastructure & Platform Security

Partner with Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure, Enterprise Technology, and product teams to define and implement security standards across cloud, hybrid, SaaS, and on-premises environments.

Guide secure design and operation of centralized logging, cloud-native monitoring, network telemetry, packet visibility, endpoint protection, identity protection, deception capabilities, and infrastructure detection and response.

Ensure architectural decisions enhance operational visibility, detection quality, resilience, recoverability, and response effectiveness.

Provide oversight for security design and operational support across regional offices, data centers, global deployments, and critical enterprise platforms.

Collaborate with platform owners to reduce control gaps, technical debt, unsupported configurations, and inconsistent implementations.

Arena Cybersecurity Design & Standards

Own the development, maintenance, approval, and communication of NBA arena cybersecurity standards, and minimum requirements.

Provide standards and requirements for secure network segmentation, remote access, identity, logging, monitoring, vulnerability management, incident response, resilience, and third-party connectivity.

Define cybersecurity requirements for arena IT and operational technology environments, including building automation systems, display control systems, game and event technologies, broadcast-related systems, physical security technology integrations, and other accessible or connected arena systems.

Establish clear roles and responsibilities among the league office, teams, arena operators, technology providers, and service partners for security controls, monitoring, incident reporting, response, remediation, and evidence collection.

Lead or oversee arena cybersecurity assessments, control validation, risk reviews, penetration testing strategy, remediation prioritization, exception management, and executive reporting.

Partner with teams and arena technology leaders to tailor secure designs to venue-specific needs while maintaining consistent minimum standards and league-wide visibility.

Create a scalable support model for arena onboarding, architectural consultation, implementation assistance, operational troubleshooting, incident