Who is Charles River Associates?
Charles River Associates® is a leading global consulting firm specializing in economic, financial, and management consulting services. CRA advises clients on economic and financial matters pertaining to litigation and regulatory proceedings, and guides corporations through critical business strategy and performance-related issues. Since 1965, clients have engaged CRA for its unique combination of functional expertise and industry knowledge, and for its objective solutions to complex problems.
CRA’s Forensic Services practice supports companies’ commitment to integrity by assisting them and their counsel in independently responding to allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and non-compliance. We are noted for deploying cross-trained teams of forensic professionals to assist our clients in gaining deeper insights and greater value more quickly. We provide accounting and forensic services as well as cybercrime investigation services.
What can you expect working as a consultant?
The opportunities to contribute to the team in this role may include (but are not limited to):
- Executing security and privacy investigations for CRA clients, in preparation of, and in response to, data security matters, which may include ongoing breach detection, threat analysis, incident response and malware analysis.
- Providing export digital forensic support for counsel and clients in support of data security incidents, such as data breaches or fraud.
- Assisting in the drafting of forensic reports, affidavits and testifying as an expert in the field of digital forensics and incident response.
- Engaging in problem-solving and forensic analysis of digital information using standard evidence handling techniques and computer forensics tools
- Identify, research, and organize information to assess the appropriateness and sufficiency of available data to facilitate effective data access and analysis
- Developing familiarity with data that serves as input to this analysis, including threat intelligence, logging data, as well as contextual clues
- Recognizing relationships among multiple sources and types of information to facilitate effective data analysis
- Programming, model building, and database administration (Python, T-SQL, VBA, Excel, C#, among others)
- Ensuring reliability of analysis and risk management through implementing quality control measures and documentation
- Forensically acquire data and images from identified hosts, and then locate evidence of compromise determine its impact from disk, file, memory, and log analysis.
- Identify artifact and evidence locations to answer critical questions, including execution, file access, data theft, anti-forensics, and detailed system usage by an adversary.
- Detect and hunt unknown live, dormant, and custom malware across multiple hosts in an enterprise environment.
- Create Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from analysis to strengthen incident response and threat intelligence efforts.
- Track adversary activity second-by-second on a host via in-depth timeline analysis.
- Understand the evidence needed to determine the type of malware used in an attack, including rootkits, backdoors, and Trojan horses, choosing appropriate defenses and response tactics for each.
- Identify lateral movement and pivots within client enterprises, showing how an adversary transitions from system to system without detection.
- Use physical memory analysis tools to determine an adversary's activities on a host and other hosts the adversary used as pivot points across the network.
- Examine traffic using common network protocols to identify patterns of activity or specific actions that warrant further investigation.
- Identify and track malware beaconing outbound to its command and control (C2) channel via memory forensics, registry analysis, and network connections.
- Participating in practice-building activities including recruiting and training
What can CRA do for you?
- Learn from and work alongside some of the most respected scholars, specialists, industry experts and regulators in the world. CRA colleagues overseeing your development will often have PhD-level training and/or extensive industry or strategy consulting experience.
- Analysts at CRA follow career paths to senior positions, or springboard from CRA to top graduate programs.
- Formal and informal training programs, including:
- Research and analysis training program focused on technical skills, consulting skills and networking with colleagues
- Quarterly technical training taught by in-house experts and affiliated professors
- On-demand library of technical training workshops
- Presentation skills and management training
- Graduate school coaching and workshops, featuring small group Q&A with top admissions officers
- Mentorship and coaching from an assigned senior staff colleague
- Flexible feedback framework to provide continuous on-the-job feedback
- Leadership roles in recruiting, training, corporate sports teams, and volunteer activities in the local community
- In-house immigration support for foreign nationals and those conducting international business travel
- Tuition reimbursement program to cover training and skill development outside of CRA
- Wellness program to promote health and well-being (e.g. nutrition counselling, financial wellbeing seminars, team fitness competitions)
- Superior benefits package
What do we look for?
- Curious, analytical, highly-motivated graduates (undergraduate or masters) with 0-3 years of experience who have majored in computer science, digital forensics, information security, cyber security, and/or information systems.
- Strong understanding of computer operating systems, software and hardware.
- Ability to conduct detailed forensic investigations and analysis of computers, networks, mobile devices and removable media
- Experience with conducting digital forensic analysis using commercial and open source forensic tools. Including file system forensics, memory analysis and network analysis.
- Experience with conducting static/dynamic malware analysis in a lab environment and threat hunting in a live environment.
- Strong understanding of proper evidence handling procedures and chain of custody.
- Experience with drafting technical and investigative reports and communicating technical findings.
- Experience with utilizing automation tools and scripts to expedite analysis
- Understanding incident handling procedures: preparation, identification, containment, eradication, and recovery-to protect enterprise environments.
- Understanding of common attack techniques used by an adversary on a victim network and leveraging those techniques to stop further adversary activity.
- Digital forensics/incident response training and certifications, including SANS GIAC (GCIA, GCFA, GCFE, GNFA, GCCC, and/or GREM), IACIS (CFCE or CIFR), Guidance Software (EnCE) or similar
- Attention to detail
- Exceptional written and oral communication skills
- Demonstrate a high level of initiative and take pride and ownership in their work
- Work collaboratively with a team
- Effectively manage your time and prioritize tasks
Check out our Analyst blogs about a typical day at CRA and how you can make an impact!
We are an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer (EEO/AAE): Minority/Female/Veteran/Disabled.
