Fahad Shaon

Cloud and Big Data Security Expert

I am a software engineer and computer security researcher working on big data and cloud computing security. Currently, I am working as Software Engineer (SRE) in the Google Cloud Filestore team. Previously, I led the research and software development efforts at DataSecTech. I also earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UT Dallas. My dissertation was on building secure cloud-based data analytics platforms utilizing trusted processors.

Research

My research objective is to build efficient and practical systems to analyze large-scale data while maintaining security and individual privacy. We are observing a tremendous increase in cloud adoption in recent years due to the cost-effectiveness and short software development/release lifecycle. As a result, building cloud-enabled collaborative, secure data analysis platforms is becoming even more essential. During my Ph.D., we looked into the core problem of searching encrypted data stored in the cloud and performing complex secure data processing with trusted processors. I am currently leading the effort to build cutting-edge security and privacy solutions for BigData infrastructure, combining program analysis and flexible policy enforcement at scale.

Selected Works

SecureDL - The Queen's Guard: A Secure Enforcement of Fine-grained Access Control In Distributed Data Analytics Platforms Fahad Shaon, Sazzadur Rahaman, Murat Kantarcioglu [ACSAC 2023]
SGX-BigMatrix: A practical encrypted data analytic framework with trusted processors Fahad Shaon, Murat Kantarcioglu, Zhiqiang Lin, Latifur Khan [CCS 2017]
SGX-IR: Secure Information Retrieval with Trusted Processors Fahad Shaon, Murat Kantarcioglu [DBSec 2020]
CryptoGuard: High precision detection of cryptographic vulnerabilities in massive-sized Java projects Sazzadur Rahaman, Ya Xiao, Sharmin Afrose, Fahad Shaon, Ke Tian, Miles Frantz, Murat Kantarcioglu, Danfeng (Daphne) Yao [CCS 2019]
A practical framework for executing complex queries over encrypted multimedia data Fahad Shaon, Murat Kantarcioglu [DBSec 2016]
Evaluating Container Debloaters Muhammad Hassan, Talha Tahir, Muhammad Farrukh, Abdullah Naveed, Anas Naeem, Fareed Zaffar, Fahad Shaon, Ashish Gehani, Sazzadur Rahaman [SecDev 2023]
Secure Cloud Data Analytics with Trusted Processors Fahad Shaon [Doctoral Dissertation]

Experiences

Software Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering

Google Inc, Seattle, WA
December 2022 - Present

Building the most reliable cloud filesystem

Chief Software Engineer

Data Security Technologies, Richardson, TX
January 2017 - December 2022

Co-founded the company to transition NoSQL and cloud security research into practice
Propose and implement an end-to-end secure collaborative patient record linkage system
Design and implement a fine-grained attribute-based access control policy enforcement system for big data frameworks (e.g., Spark and Hive)
Build a cluster orchestration system to construct multi-node secure Spark clusters seamlessly with SecureDL policy enforcement.
Create pipelines to deploy a cloud-native version of advanced code analysis for Spark jobs
Raised $1.25M in research grants from NSF (SBIR 1647681 and SBIR 1758628) and NIH (1R43LM013960-01) as Principal Investigator
Train and lead software developers to achieve improved delivery quality and productivity
Define best practices and quality requirements through hands-on development
Interview potential customers to find product-market fit and pitch DataSecTech to VCs.

Software Development Engineer Intern

Amazon Web Services, Seattle, WA
June 2016 - August 2016

Built effective and quantifiable mechanism to score search engine performance on a large dataset.
Evaluated and implemented search result improvements to increase the efficiency of the search engine.
Received a return offer as an SDE intern for Summer 2017

Research/Teaching Assistant

The University of Texas at Dallas, Computer Science Department, Richardson, TX
September 2012 - December 2016

Research focus: improve privacy in cloud computing environment leveraging encryption technologies.
Mentor and teach students on Cloud Security, Database Design, and several other Software Engineering (OOAD, ARE, SE, ST) courses
Administrate DSPL Lab clusters for privacy-preserving BigData mining experiments with Apache Spark and Hadoop

Software Engineer

Therap Services, Dhaka, Bangladesh
September 2011 - July 2012

Design and develop Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant documentation software solution for developmental disabilities support providers.

Education

The University of Texas at Dallas

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Computer Science, 2019
Grade: 3.9
Advisors: Dr. Murat Kantarcioglu, Dr. Latifur Khan

Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.), Computer Science and Engineering, 2011
Advisor: Dr. Muhammad Masroor Ali

Awards and Honors

Finalist of State Farm Coding Competition 2015 among 380 teams [featured in UT Dallas news].
1st place winner of Code Warriors' Challenge 2011, Student Category, Java Track organized by Bangladesh Association of Software & Information Services (BASIS)
Awarded Government Scholarship (Talent pool) for outstanding result in Higher Secondary School Certificate Exam 2005
1st place winner of Physics Olympiad, BN College Science Festival 2004 organized by Bangladesh Navy College, Dhaka.
2nd runner-up of Math Olympiad, 2nd Inter College Science Festival 2004 organized by Holy Cross College Science Club.