Event Details
Network Isolation and Asynchronous Communications for Enhanced SaaS Security
Presenter: Sagar Cholakala Vishwanath
Supervisor:
Date: Tue, September 29, 2026
Time: 15:00:00 - 00:00:00
Place: Online via Zoom
ABSTRACT
Speaker: Sagar Cholakala Vishwanath
Title: Network Isolation and Asynchronous Communications for Enhanced SaaS Security
Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Aaron Gulliver
Date: September 29th, 2026
Time: 3:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Location: REMOTE Via Zoom Meeting
Zoom meeting link:
https://uvic.zoom.us/j/88600338865?pwd=V4bp0iWQRkpakMEH1IucfhW5o2s4xM.1
Meeting ID: 886 0033 8865
Password: 178549
Note: Please log in to Zoom via SSO and your UVic Netlink ID
Abstract: SaaS platforms use microservice architectures to support scalability and independent deployment, but this introduces security risks such as unauthorized access, lateral movement, and data leakage. This seminar presents a security architecture using virtual network isolation, micro-segmentation, firewall rules, and asynchronous communication. The approach uses virtual networks, VLANs, isolated workloads, and firewall policies to allow only approved traffic, along with Kafka-based messaging to decouple services and enforce single-direction data flow. The implementation uses pfSense, VMware Workstation, network zones, and Kafka access controls, where a payment service in a DMZ publishes events to Kafka and an Order History service in a protected network consumes them. Firewall rules and broker permissions restrict communication to authorized paths. The seminar will discuss how this architecture limits lateral movement, reduces the impact of compromised services, protects audit functions, and supports tenant isolation, along with trade-offs such as latency, message delays, consistency, complexity, and operational overhead.