Securing the Digital Frontier: A Security Engineer’s Vision for Advanced Analytics

With lives turning more digital, keeping data and systems secure has become more important than ever. From mobile applications to cloud networks, organisations are under constant pressure to stay ahead of cyber threats. This is where security engineers come in—working to protect users and prevent attacks. One such engineer, Syeda H Kawsar, has been making meaningful contributions to this effort, especially in how advanced analytics are being used to improve cybersecurity.

Working with Comcast, Kawsar has played a key role in building and securing the Xfinity Secure Private Network (SPN), a VPN service that now supports over half a million users. She shared that the goal was to ensure that user data stayed protected every time someone connected through the app. To make that happen, her team implemented security features like mutual TLS, app certificate pinning, and strong encryption—all of which helped reduce risks like data leaks and unauthorized access.

Beyond securing user connections, her work also focused on how to better detect threats before they caused harm. The engineer helped design a system that used machine learning to watch for strange behavior in cloud systems, on devices, and across networks. Instead of relying only on manual reviews or basic rules, this system could spot unusual activity faster and more accurately. As a result, detection time dropped from several days to just a few hours, and false alerts were reduced by around 40%. She also added, “I leveraged UEBA (User and Entity Behavior Analytics) to detect and respond to insider threats and compromised credentials, and was involved in architected a scalable, high-throughput data ingestion pipeline using Kafka + Spark Streaming to handle security log data daily for analytics enrichment.”

This smarter approach also included building tools that helped security teams act faster. For example, real-time dashboards were created to show key risk indicators and threat updates. These dashboards gave company leaders a clear view of what was happening and helped them make quick decisions during drills or security reviews. This kind of visibility is becoming more common in modern organizations, especially as cyber risks become part of larger business conversations.

A major part of the engineer’s work involved improving how security is built into the development process. For the SPN app, tools were added to automatically scan for issues in code, infrastructure settings, and even the containers used to deploy services. These checks were built into the CI/CD pipeline, so problems could be caught early, before they reached users.

However, Kawsar shared that there were also challenges along the way. One of the biggest was responding quickly to threats without disrupting service. To solve this, she helped set up automated responses that could isolate affected systems or block suspicious traffic the moment something went wrong. This greatly assisted in limiting the damage and kept users safe without needing to wait for manual fixes.

Looking at the bigger picture, it is believed that the future of cybersecurity will depend on automation that’s both smart and trustworthy—this is something that Kawsar also agrees with. It’s not just about using AI—it’s about making sure that AI understands how security works in different systems, and that people can understand the choices it makes. Systems will need to respond faster, explain themselves clearly, and work closely with human analysts.

What’s worth noting is that by using data, behavior patterns, and real-time monitoring, security teams are starting to get ahead of attacks rather than just cleaning up after them. That’s a big step forward in protecting the digital systems that people rely on every day. As threats keep turning complex, the work of security engineers and the tools they build will see a rise in demand. Moreover, with advanced analytics leading the way, the future of cybersecurity might just be a little smarter and a lot more prepared.