I work at the intersection of networks, security and privacy. I can divide my thrust areas into four broad categories (as shown above). If you are keen to know more about these research areas, please refer to this link. 

If you feel motivated enough to work with me, let me try to demotivate you once more. Here comes the bread-and-butter of PhD scholars---PUBLISH or perish (huhh).

In computer science, there are some competitive conferences where we regularly try to publish our work. Typically their acceptance rate is less than 20%. Often these venues have "out-of-the-world" research expectations and thus paper rejection is a norm, and acceptance is an anomaly.

A typical research paper cycle is as follows:

Idea (day 1)--> The first draft gets ready (one to 1.5 years)--> The improved version and submission (3--6 months)---> The paper gets rejected (3 months)---> resubmission and rejection ---> (2 to 5 months) ---> REJECTION and RESUBMISSION (on repeat mode) ---> The paper gets accepted. 
Total two years (approx.)

A few top academically acclaimed conferences that you and I will aim for are:

In Security: IEEE S&P (Oakland), CCS, NDSS, Usenix Security, PoPETS, AsiaCCS, ACSAC, Esorics, Euro S&P

In Networks and Measurements: ACM Sigcomm, IEEE Infocom, ACM IMC, CoNEXT, PAM, TMA, WWW

Ideally, one expects three to four solid papers published in these venues if you aim for a world-class PhD; thus, five years in PhD must not be taken as ``too much time''. It is not ! This naturally means that in your late second year or third year you should ideally work on two problems parallelly. You will be the lead actor in this movie, but I will try my best to have solid supporting actors (masters/ undergrad/ interns) working with you under my direction. I strongly encourage collaborative environment (including international peers). But it largely depends on your approach towards research, ability to lead the group, handling tantrums of your team members, off time zones (if international collaborators are involved), etc. These are just some pointers and many more factors will come into play in your arduous journey called as PhD.
 
These (harsh) rejections and other obstacles may deviate you from mastery to outcome goals. The real challenge is to still stuck to the mastery goals.

Also, please read what we expect to see in a thesis proposal.

Some other essential points that will further help you to decide whether PhD in systems is your cup of tea is by reading the excellent blogs written by Biswa (systems faculty at IIT Bombay). They are:

        
1. All you have got is all it takes: Doing Top-quality Computer Architecture/systems Research, Cricket, and the Indian Research Ecosystem (link). [A nice overview of how to approach a good systems research problem and taking baby steps in the right direction].

2. Just Say “NO” to a Ph.D. in Computer Systems: An Indian perspective (link) [What you must not expect from a PhD]