Rana Hussain

Hi, I'm Rana. I grew up in Hyderabad, India, and attended Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet before coming to the U.S. for higher education. After graduating from North Central College with a B.S. in Computer Science in 2021, I started my career as a Security Analyst. I was eager to learn everything I could, and that drive helped me earn certifications and advance into a Research and Reporting Analyst role. But the more time I spent in the industry, the more I felt pulled toward something deeper. Responding to security incidents taught me a lot, but I kept asking myself: why are we always one step behind? I wanted to understand the root causes and explore how we could get ahead of threats instead of just reacting to them. That question brought me back to academia, and I'm now incredibly grateful to be working on my master's thesis under Dr. Aaron Striegel at the Wireless Institute. My industry experience taught me something I can't shake: every piece of data we create makes the world a little more vulnerable. The challenge of protecting people's digital lives has become something that truly keeps me awake at night. I'm interested in how we can responsibly integrate AI techniques to improve our ability to detect and anticipate threats, treating it as one valuable tool in a much larger arsenal rather than a standalone solution. What excites me most about research is the opportunity to dig deep into these hard questions, to experiment, fail, learn, and eventually contribute something meaningful to the field. I thrive on the kind of work that requires persistence, creativity, and a willingness to challenge existing approaches. The more complex the problem, the more driven I am to understand it from every angle.

Current Activity

As I work through my thesis research, I'm also committed to growing as a researcher and practitioner. The cybersecurity landscape evolves so rapidly, and I want to keep learning so I can contribute meaningfully to both academic insights and hands-on solutions.

Currently, I am:

Enhancing my practical cybersecurity skills through TryHackMe challenges
Working toward earning another Splunk certification by January 2026
Exploring advanced topics in AI and Machine Learning to enhance my research capabilities

Research

Thesis Research

My thesis research focuses on detecting and preventing sophisticated identity spoofing attacks, particularly those used by malicious actors to infiltrate organizations as seemingly legitimate remote workers. State-sponsored IT workers have deployed thousands of skilled workers who use stolen identities, AI-generated images, and voice-changing software to secure positions at companies worldwide, with hundreds of organizations unknowingly employing these workers in recent years. What drives my work is how rapidly this threat is evolving. These actors now use AI tools to manipulate employment documents and are experimenting with voice-changing technology that could soon bypass traditional verification methods entirely. I'm developing practical detection frameworks that focus on identifying AI-generated content through deepfake analysis. These infiltrators don't just generate revenue for hostile regimes; they steal intellectual property, source code, and trade secrets, and sometimes even extort their employers. We're in a race against adversaries who are leveraging the same AI technologies we're trying to protect, and my goal is to give organizations the tools they need to identify and stop these threats before sensitive data is compromised.

Additional Research: Graph Learning for Adaptive Access Control

Beyond my thesis work, I'm conducting research for one of my graduate courses taught by Dr. Fanny Ye on applying graph learning techniques to develop adaptive access control systems. This project explores how graph transformer networks can model complex relationships between users, resources, and access patterns to create more intelligent and context-aware security frameworks that evolve with organizational needs and emerging threats.

Resume

Education

University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN

Master of Science, Computer Science & Engineering May 2026

Research: Active member of the Wireless Institute at the University of Notre Dame, currently initiating research on Zero Trust Networks (ZTN) under the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Aaron Striegel.

Relevant Courses: Special Topics in Advanced and Secure Networks, Cybercrime and the Law, Graduate Human Computer Interaction, Computer Security, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networks, Graph Learning, Secure Software Engineering

North Central College Naperville, IL

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science September 2017 – May 2021

Double Minor in English Writing and Mathematics

Professional Experience

Graduate Teaching Assistant August 2024 - Present

University of Notre Dame, Computer Science & Engineering Notre Dame, IN

Discrete Mathematics - Fall 2024
Logic Design - Spring 2025
Principles of Computing - Fall 2025

Threat Detection Engineering Intern May 2025 - August 2025