CISO Domain Lead BC/DR (NL/FR/ENG) - Freelance

Daily rate: €750/day

Context

As an external consultant acting as Domain Lead for Disaster Recovery (DR) for a major national railway operator and Business Continuity (BC) for a leading IT services company, you will ensure robust governance and strategic oversight of resilience capabilities. Your mission is to maintain realistic, validated DR strategies and continuity arrangements that balance technical feasibility with business priorities.

You will provide pragmatic guidance, perform cost-benefit analyses for DR options (e.g., active-active vs. cold standby, datacenter distance, replication strategies), and drive maturity improvement across DR and BC processes, frameworks, and culture.

Organization:

• Reports to:

  • CISO Office Team Lead (administrative)

  • CISO (strategic alignment)

• Direct reports: None

• Key interactions:

  • Business service owners of the railway operator

  • IT service owners of the IT services company

  • Architects, infrastructure teams

  • Risk Office, Internal Audit, crisis response teams

  • External suppliers

Missions

1. DR Strategy Governance – Railway Operator

   • Define and maintain DR strategy and standards.

   • Ensure RTO/RPO requirements are realistic and embedded in architecture.

   • Advise on multi-site recovery, failover patterns, and interdependencies.

   • Provide cost-benefit guidance for DR design decisions (e.g., datacenter distance, replication tiers).

2. BC Governance – IT Services Company

   • Maintain BC principles and templates.

   • Align BC with resilience needs and contractual obligations of the railway operator.

   • Challenge BC capabilities and identify systemic weaknesses.

3. Oversight & Reporting

   • Review DR test results and ensure actionable remediation.

   • Maintain dashboards, KRIs, and resilience heatmaps.

   • Monitor coherence of multi-site DR architecture.

4. Expert Support

   • Offer pragmatic advice for complex recovery scenarios.

   • Guide stakeholders on hybrid cloud/on-prem DR designs.

   • Ensure dependency mapping and architectural alignment.

5. Stakeholder Coaching

   • Train teams on DR/BC responsibilities and guide them to improve the overall DR Plan.

   • Produce clear documentation and best practices.

   • Promote resilience culture across both organizations.

6. Maturity Improvement

   • Assess current DR/BC maturity using recognized models (e.g., ISO 22301 maturity scale).

   • Define and implement a roadmap for continuous improvement.

   • Introduce metrics and benchmarks to track progress.

   • Recommend automation, tooling, and governance enhancements.

Scope

• DR governance & strategy for the railway operator

• BC governance & strategy for the IT services company

• DR/BC policies, standards, templates

• Oversight of DR readiness and BC posture

• Expert support for multi-site recovery environments

• DR/BC reporting & KPIs/KRIs

• Integration with risk, audit, and incident management

• Maturity improvement initiatives

Conformity Criteria

Experience & Education:

• 15+ years in IT

• Minimum 5 years of proven experience in IT Resilience, or DR, or Business Continuity

• Minimum Master's Degree or Equivalent through Experience

• Languages: Trilingual (EN/FR/NL): fluent in English, French, and Dutch (spoken and written), all three at least level C1, with either French or Dutch at native level C2

• 1 letter of recommendation from previous employer/client proving successful track record in setting up Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity in similar environments. This letter must be attached as the last page of the CV.

• Contractor must agree to be present at the IT services company’s office up to five days per week during the assignment. On-site presence requirements may vary and will be communicated during the assignment.

Evaluation Criteria

The proposal will be evaluated based on demonstrated relevant knowledge, competences, and experience in:

• DR frameworks (ISO 27031, NIST 800-34)

• BC management (ISO 22301)

• Multi-site and hybrid-cloud architectures

• Network, storage, replication, and failover patterns

• NIS 2 resilience obligations

• Influencing stakeholders without direct authority

• Assessing and improving organizational maturity

• Relevant business experience outside the IT domain

Experience with the railway operator, the IT services company, or comparable critical-infrastructure environments will be considered an advantage.