Understanding threat modeling
Threat modeling is a structured approach to identifying threats, potential vulnerabilities, and corresponding security requirements, quantifying threat and vulnerability criticality, and prioritizing remediation per severity. It is performed as a proactive measure during product design and development to ensure that adequate controls are in place before the deployment.
There are four generic steps in threat modeling:
- Model: What are we building?
- Identify Threats: What could go wrong?
- Mitigate: What countermeasures do we have to defend against the threats?
- Validate: Have we performed all the previous steps?
These steps can be visualized as follows:
Figure 7.2 – The threat modeling cycle
The purpose of threat modeling is to provide defenders with a systematic analysis of the most likely attack vectors. Threat modeling helps in identifying high-value assets, assets that are vulnerable to attack...