While it may sound impossible, you can prepare for virtually anything. Threat modeling, various risk-assessment methodologies, can help you identify threats and find ways to deal with them efficiently. Here’s everything you need to know about how threat modeling works and how you can use it in your business.

Threat modeling is the process of using hypothetical scenarios, system diagrams, and testing to help secure systems and data. By identifying vulnerabilities, helping with risk assessment, and suggesting corrective action, threat modeling helps improve cybersecurity and trust in key business systems.

But threat modeling has applications beyond cybersecurity. In the most basic sense, it can mean listing threats that can disrupt business processes such as earthquakes, floods, or theft and finding ways to counter these threats.

Threat modeling is a simple and effective approach to improving security, but because its benefits can depend on individual circumstances, it may not be the best risk assessment method for your business. However, some of its benefits are universal and apply to businesses of all industries and sizes.

The threat modeling process requires input from many stakeholders, but when done correctly, it invites collaboration. As a result, risk evaluation and prioritization can be performed much faster compared to other methods. Moreover, due to its simplicity, you can review and fix various issues before they have the chance to cause harm.

Threat modeling includes assessment of possible risks and asset prioritization, so it provides a bird’s eye view of the entire organization and its partners, and it helps assess the risks associated with your business and create solutions specific to your situation.

Many industries have specific regulatory requirements related to security and privacy, such as the GDPR and HIPAA. By applying threat modeling methodologies, organizations can identify and address specific risks such as data breaches.

Threat modeling aids in constructing a more secure application. It allows you to design a tailored security strategy uniquely suited for your product rather than relying on broad security measures. By identifying potential vulnerabilities and averting coding errors, you can protect your application from potential hacks, ultimately leading to a more robust product.

Early identification of security issues during the development stage can result in substantial cost savings. By being proactive in risk management, you can dodge the costly aftermath of security breaches, legal implications, and reputational harm that can stem from ignored security weak points.

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As you’ll see, threat modeling is adaptable because it consists of many methodologies. But in the most simple terms, you list your assets, identify threats, and come up with solutions.

How threat modeling works:

Since threat modeling is such an adaptable method, you can apply it to virtually any industry or business. But that also means that mobile application threat modeling differs from cloud security, blockchain, or supply-chain threat modeling.

Let’s take online commerce as an example. Online shop customers trust the shop with private information such as passwords and payment details, so the business owner needs to know how to protect it. Using threat modeling, they’ll first list out all the ways a hacker might break in, such as a man-in-a-middle attack. Then, they’ll need to come up with a game plan to stop these attacks — using a strong firewall, for example.

Threat modeling can also apply to your home. The fast-emerging smart home technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets, as cool as they are, can open up your home network to hacking. So the developers of these technologies must identify ways someone could exploit these gadgets and find ways to ensure your new sound system or smart light bulb don’t weaken wireless network security overall. For example, they can push regular updates to fix bugs quickly.

Threat modeling requires a lot of work. Is it worth all that effort? For sure. It can help you identify a wide range of potential threats to your system and its architecture. Here are some examples of common threats you can identify with threat modeling:

Threat modeling methodologies vary widely, so make sure to take your time and find the one that’s right for you.

In 2013, Tamara Denning, Batya Friedman, and Tadayoshi Kohno from the University of Washington developed a unique deck of cards aimed at exploring four dimensions of security: the adversary’s motives, resources, methods, and human impact. This approach, while not exhaustive, offers a practical way to prompt meaningful discussions about the system under development and specific examples of potential threats.

STRIDE, created by Praerit Garg and Loren Kohnfelder, is a mnemonic to help you remember the most common threats you should be prepared for:

Just like STRIDE, DREAD is a mnemonic designed to help prioritize threats based on certain criteria and assign them scores to determine their relative risk levels:

Using DREAD, you can assess threats by rating each of the five categories, while the sum of all ratings would give you a natural priority list for all threats. Keep in mind that Microsoft stopped using the DREAD model in 2008 because rating can be subjective and inconsistent.

PASTA, or process for attack simulation and threat analysis, is a seven-step, risk-centric approach. Here are its steps:

The Kill Chain methodology focuses on preventing cyberattacks by breaking them down into seven common stages, such as reconnaissance, weaponization, delivery, exploitation, installation, command and control, and actions on objectives.

This method provides a roadmap that highlights the various stages an attacker must go through to complete a successful attack, helping you understand and prepare for the attacker’s tactics. For example, if you know that an attack against your system could use phishing, you can prepare by training your employees.

With plenty of commercial and free products to choose from, picking the right one may seem like an impossible task. Just keep in mind that most threat modeling methodologies can be done with a sheet of paper or a whiteboard.

If you’re planning to implement threat modeling in your organization, you should first consider different methodologies and ways you can implement them best in your organization. Whatever you decide, start as early in the development stage as possible. Using threat modeling from the very beginning will prevent hardships in the future because you’ll be able to address all your security concerns during the creation phase.

Also, make sure that you start a threat modeling session by defining its scope and objectives. While sometimes looking outside the box can help you find answers you weren’t looking for, without limits, things can get out of hand pretty fast. Moreover, it’s incredibly important to involve all the stakeholders because each brings unique insights and perspectives that contribute to a more comprehensive threat assessment.

Last, documenting every step such as identified threats, vulnerabilities, and mitigation strategies will help improve communication and further improvement. Threat modeling should be handled as an iterative process that you need to perform regularly, especially if significant changes have occurred in the system.