🔬 PhD Researcher in Cybersecurity at Northern Illinois University (NIU), specializing in Network Slice Orchestration and Security in cloud-native infrastructures. My work is rooted in the belief that robust cybersecurity in modern cloud and 5G/6G environments must be data-driven — built on deep understanding of how data flows, transforms, and lives across distributed systems.

I am a PhD candidate in Cybersecurity at NIU, where my research focuses on securing network slicing orchestration in 5G/6G and multi-tenant cloud environments. My approach is shaped by a strong foundation in data engineering and cloud platforms — I don't just study security in theory; I build the pipelines, understand the telemetry, and design the analytics that make security observable, measurable, and automated.

Before pivoting into cybersecurity research, I spent years architecting large-scale data systems on Azure, AWS, and GCP, building ETL pipelines at scale, and designing dashboards that turned raw data into decisions. That experience now fuels my research — whether it's detecting anomalies in network slice traffic, enforcing security policies across cloud-native deployments, or building threat detection systems that learn from streaming telemetry.

I bring data engineering rigor to cybersecurity problems, and security awareness back to systems design.

• Cloud Security & Network Security: Network Slice Security, Cloud Security Posture Management, Container/K8s Security, Zero-Trust Architecture, Security Policy Orchestration, Threat Modeling
• Security Detection & Analytics: ML-driven Anomaly Detection, Intrusion Detection, Security Telemetry Pipelines, eBPF-based Observability, SIEM Concepts
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure, AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Service Mesh (Istio), Cloud-Native Security
• Big Data & Security Data Pipelines: PySpark, SparkSQL, Databricks, Azure Synapse, AWS Glue — applied to security log processing, network telemetry, and threat analytics
• Data Engineering: ETL/ELT Pipelines, Azure Data Factory, AWS Lambda, ADLS, S3, Redshift, PostgreSQL, SQL Server
• Programming & Analytics: Python, R, SQL, Power BI, Tableau — for security data analysis, threat modeling, and visualization

My PhD research centers on Network Slice Orchestration and Security in Cloud Infrastructures, addressing:

• Security Isolation in Multi-Tenant Network Slices: Developing mechanisms to ensure strong isolation between co-existing network slices in shared cloud/NFV infrastructure.
• Policy-Driven Security Orchestration: Automating security policy enforcement across slice lifecycles using intent-based policies and zero-trust principles.
• Threat Detection for Sliced Networks: Leveraging ML-driven anomaly detection and real-time monitoring to identify threats in virtualized 5G/6G network functions.
• Secure Resource Allocation: Optimizing slice resource allocation while maintaining security constraints and SLA guarantees.
• Cloud-Native Security for 5G/6G: Applying container security, service mesh, and eBPF-based observability to protect network function deployments.

My industry experience in data and cloud engineering provides the practical foundation for my security research — building and securing the systems I now study.

• Business Intelligence Engineer at Samsara (June 2024 - Sept 2024)

  • Designed Tableau dashboards and analytics pipelines for web and marketing metrics.
  • Migrated SQL queries from Google BigQuery to Databricks, improving performance by 50% — deepening expertise in distributed data processing relevant to security telemetry at scale.

• Data Analytics Engineer at US Bank (Sept 2023 - June 2024)

  • Developed Azure Data Factory pipelines and Power BI dashboards for data-driven insights in a regulated financial environment — building experience in secure data handling and compliance-aware system design.

• Data Integration Engineer at SEIU 775 Benefits Group (Feb 2023 - June 2023)

  • Built AWS Glue ETL jobs and Tableau dashboards for benefits data — strengthening skills in cloud-native data processing and multi-cloud architectures.

• Security Telemetry Pipeline (WIP): Building a PySpark-based pipeline to ingest, process, and analyze network slice telemetry for anomaly detection in virtualized 5G environments.
• ETL Pipeline with PySpark & Power BI: Built an ETL pipeline to extract data from CSV files, transform it using PySpark, and load it into PostgreSQL, integrated into Power BI for visualization.
• Azure Data Factory Workflow: End-to-end data workflows in Azure Data Factory combining Python scripts and Logic Apps for efficient data movement and transformation.
• Web Metrics Dashboard: Tableau dashboard providing actionable insights on user behavior, page performance, and conversion rates — foundational experience in building analytics that inform security monitoring.
• USA Sales Dashboard: Interactive Tableau dashboard analyzing US sales performance with dynamic filters, geographic maps, and KPI tracking. View Dashboard

• Azure Data Engineer Associate (Microsoft Certified)
• Power BI Data Analyst (Microsoft Certified)
• Databricks Lakehouse & Generative AI Fundamentals (Databricks Accredited)
• Data Analytics using SAS Software (NIU Certified)

• Advancing my research in network slice security, cloud-native security, and 5G/6G security architectures.
• Deepening expertise in Kubernetes security, service mesh (Istio), eBPF, and cloud security posture management.
• Exploring machine learning for intrusion detection and anomaly detection in virtualized network environments.
• Building hands-on labs and testbeds for secure slice orchestration using open-source NFV and cloud platforms.

• Email: Vishnu.code369@gmail.com
• LinkedIn: Vishnu Kommareddy