Threat Modeling in Information Technology Security

Every day brings new threats to information technology security: hackers, ransomware, denial-of-service attacks and more. It can be hard to know where to start to protect against them all. That’s where threat modeling comes in.

Threat modeling helps identify security risks by assessing how attackers might access and exploit system components. It’s not a checklist-based approach, but a methodology that requires deep understanding of an information system’s architecture, design decisions and engineering choices. It’s a collaboration between security experts and business stakeholders, as well as software developers and system architects. The goal is to create a detailed picture of an attacker’s motivations, goals and capabilities so that the risks can be identified, prioritized and mitigated.

There are many different threat modeling frameworks available to help you understand the potential vulnerabilities in your system. For example, STRIDE (Security Risk Impact Data Entity) is a model that uses business goals to assess the value of an entity in an information technology security and then categorizes the entities by their impact on those goals. This allows the risks to be prioritized and ranked so that you can focus on protecting the most valuable data first. Other frameworks are also available, such as PASTA (Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis), DREAD (Decibel Risk Impact on Enterprise Architecture) and CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System). Choosing the right one for your situation will depend on how complex your systems are and what you’re trying to accomplish with threat modeling.

The Role of Threat Modeling in Information Technology Security

While you can make threat models by yourself, it’s usually a good idea to have a team of people working on them. This way, you’ll be able to bring in other perspectives that may be overlooked by someone with only a security background. Getting a range of viewpoints will also give you a more holistic view of the risks to your systems.

Creating a threat model should take place throughout the development cycle, from the initial stages of planning to deployment and updates. In shift left spirit, this prevents problems from sprouting in the code and requiring expensive fixes later.

You can use various tools to speed up the process of creating a threat model. Automated testing, for instance, can run continuous threat modeling to catch new threats before they become a problem. TMaaS solutions can also do the heavy-lifting, crunching numbers and checking for new vulnerabilities when your systems are updated or expanded.

Threat modeling can be a time-consuming activity, but the benefits are considerable. It can reduce the number of vulnerabilities in your system, which will ultimately lower your risk profile. It can also improve communication and collaboration, helping your team work more effectively and build a stronger culture of security.

Everyone engages in threat modeling on some level, whether they realize it or not. Commuters engage in it on their morning journey to work, when they consider the worst-case scenarios on their commute. Children engage in it when they decide what actions to take to avoid being bullied on the playground.