Threat Modeling

Threat modeling concepts and methodologies have a role to play in every phase or stage of a system's life cycle, from requirements analysis down to real-time attack detection and response.

Threat modeling presents a conceptual view of how the target being evaluated functions by asking, "What needs protection and what does it need protection from?"

By adopting this approach, it allows security staff to adopt a sharp focus on the various elements of the organization, breaking it into its component parts. Each business unit within an organization will require its own set of standards, systems, and technologies. Each one of these will have its own set of vulnerabilities. By understanding the elements and aligning the possible threats with those elements, existing threats can be more quickly identified.

But now let's think about the purpose of threat modeling. We can create an understanding of where and how an attacker might affect the target, accomplished by understanding potential locations (in time, space, and the process) of vulnerabilities. This requires adopting the mindset of an attacker. For example, give a new mobile phone to a common user, they might react by thinking, "This is really cool. What can it do?" Now, give the same device to a malicious actor, and their thought process will be "This is really cool. What can I make it do?"

It is difficult to identify vulnerabilities and test for those vulnerabilities, because when we test, we test within our own mindsets.

So it is essential to test using alternative mindsets, including, of course, malicious mindsets or even uninformed ones. Learn how to think like an attacker.

Threat modeling is just a form of testing; it is designed to identify critical systems and services and to provide an insight into what vulnerabilities might exist and where. Threat modeling does not actually fix a problem, though, it only identifies that a problem is present. The organization still needs to incorporate the results into its remediation process.