[STREAM-841] Perf improvements for kafka connector internal PR

[sandeep-ctds]

• Created PR for running CI checks as it's not allowed on forked repo PRs. Will be merging this PR instead of [STREAM-841] Perf improvements for kafka connector #163
• For security reasons, github secrets and variables are not passed to workflows that are triggered by a pull request from a fork. We need them for running CI checks on this repository.

• We can raise an internal PR in that scenario for running CI checks after verifying none of the changes can leak repository secrets or variables.

[sandeep-ctds]

OWASP failures will be addressed in a different PR.
#167