Priyanka P.

About Priyanka P.

I\'m passionate about breaking into systems and building detection systems that catch real threats.I\'ve led penetration testing for global clients across fintech, healthcare, and IT at KPMG, running full-stack security assessments (web, mobile, API, network, secure code reviews) and translating findings into fixes that developers could actually implement. At Synopsys, I automated vulnerability detection in mobile apps through CI/CD integration, reducing manual triage work for security teams.At Microsoft, I shifted to the blue team side: engineering correlation rules in Defender XDR to reduce incident noise and help SOC analysts focus on real threats. I led customer escalations end-to-end, built multi-hop KQL queries for advanced graph-based threat hunting, and hardened detection/correlation quality using MITRE ATT & CK feedback.My strength is bridging offense and defense: I know how attackers operate because I\'ve tested systems offensively, and I know what defenders need because I\'ve built detection systems at scale as a security researcher.What I bring:Offensive Security: Web/Mobile/API/Network pentesting, vulnerability assessments, secure code review, SAST/DAST assessments, Threat modeling (KPMG, Synopsys)Detection Engineering: Threat research, correlation/detection logic, incident/alert quality, KQL hunting queries (Microsoft)Security Automation: CI/CD security tooling, SAST/DAST integration, automated detection (Synopsys)Security Standards & Frameworks: OWASP, MITRE ATT & CK, Cyber Kill Chain, STRIDE, NIST, CVSS, CVEBackground: MS Information Security from Carnegie Mellon University | CEH | Security roles at Microsoft, KPMG, SynopsysI\'m currently seeking software/security engineering roles where I can apply both offensive and defensive expertise. Open to opportunities in software engineering, security engineering, threat detection, product security, application security, security research, or penetration tester — especially with teams building security at scale.Let\'s connect if you\'re working on hard security problems.

Experience

1. Security Researcher

   Microsoft

   Jun 2024 — Present · Redmond, WA, US

   Multi-Domain Attack Threat Research and Intelligence XDR (MATRIX)• Implemented and optimized correlation rules in Defender XDR to improve incident quality, reduce alert noise, and help SOC teams focus on genuine threats through data-driven analysis of trends, anomalies, and activity patterns.• Built root-cause analysis dashboard to identify and resolve singleton incidents caused by ingestion delays, merge-constraint violations, noisy alerts, and missing evidence.• Hardened correlation quality by analyzing MITRE ATT & CK evaluation feedback and tuning legacy rules, reducing SOC overhead on synthetic alerts.• Owned end-to-end customer escalations from intake through triage to bug/feature pipeline, partnering with Tier-1 support to drive detection and correlation improvements.• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to enhance graph-based threat hunting by building multi-hop KQL queries and graph expansions that visualize complete attack paths for SOC analysts and threat hunters.

Education

• PES University

  Bachelor of Technology , Electronics and Communication Engineering

• PES University

  Minors, Computer Science and Engineering

• Carnegie Mellon University

  Master of Science - MS, Information Technology - Information Security