How Does Threat Modeling Work?
Threat modeling involves identifying potential risks and threats to an organization’s security. Often, this is accomplished by applying a threat modeling framework, which offers a structured means of considering risks and reduces the risk of oversights.
Some of the most commonly used threat modeling frameworks include:
- STRIDE: STRIDE is a threat modeling framework that identifies and classifies risks. The acronym identifies common threats, including Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, and Elevation of Privilege.
- PASTA: Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis (PASTA) is a risk-centric framework focused on business impacts. It has a seven-step iterative process to identify potential threats to the organization.
- DREAD: DREAD is designed to help with the quantification and prioritization of threats to an organization. The acronym stands for Damage, Reproducibility, Exploitability, Affected Users, and Discoverability.
Different frameworks are designed for various situations. The right framework for a particular task may depend on the use case and the preferences of the threat modeling team.
Why is Threat Modeling Necessary?
Organizations face a variety of security threats, risks, and vulnerabilities. As corporate IT environments and systems grow more diverse and complex, these potential threats can be more difficult to identify and address. Organizations also face threats originating from both inside and outside of the organization.
Threat modeling is important because it helps an organization achieve greater visibility into the potential threats that it faces. By using a structured threat modeling framework, a security team can ask specific questions about the potential risks facing each system. This more structured approach can enable them to detect security threats that might otherwise be overlooked.
Once an organization has identified potential threats and risks to the organization, it can develop strategies for prioritizing and remediating them. The end result is an enhanced security posture where the newly identified threats are mitigated, managed, or accepted.
Benefits of Threat Modeling
Threat modeling is an invaluable exercise that should be performed regularly by the corporate cybersecurity team.
Some of the benefits that it can provide to the company include the following:
- Greater Risk Visibility: The primary objective of threat modeling is to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the risks and threats facing an organization. This improved risk visibility can inform an organization’s security investment and cybersecurity risk management efforts.
- Accurate Risk Assessment: A corporate security team can only protect the company against those security threats that it knows exist. Threat modeling provides a more accurate estimate of an organization’s risk because it encourages and empowers the security team to identify potential risks and threats that might otherwise be overlooked.
- Enhanced Cybersecurity Posture: The result of a threat assessment is a list of the potential security risks and threats to the organization. Using this information, the company can develop a remediation plan that enables it to eliminate or manage some of these risks, reducing the organization’s overall risk exposure.
Threat Modeling Best Practices
Threat modeling can be an effective tool if used properly. Some best practices include the following:
- Define the Scope: Performing a threat modeling exercise on an organization’s entire IT infrastructure can be overwhelming. It’s better to define a smaller scope for an exercise, such as a particular application or system.
- Take Advantage of Visualization: Humans are often visual thinkers, and relationships may be easier to see as a diagram rather than a list of facts. Visualizing networks, attack trees, etc. can help with identifying potential threats or risks.
- Use Modeling Frameworks: An undirected threat modeling exercise is more likely to overlook potential risks or threats to the company. Using a threat modeling framework can provide more comprehensive visibility by providing focused questions to ask.
- Try Attacker Profiling: An organization may face attacks by a wide range of potential threat actors (internal, external, etc.). Profile potential attackers based on their motives, means, etc. to identify various risks and threats that they might pose to an organization.
- Create a Traceability Matrix: A traceability matrix helps to identify weak or missing security controls. Building one during a threat modeling exercise can help with the identification of security gaps.
- Prioritize Identified Risks: Companies rarely have the resources required to address all of the risks and threats that they face. Prioritizing based on likelihood and potential impact maximizes the potential return on investment (ROI).
Threat Modeling with Infinity Global Services
Threat modeling can provide significant benefits to an organization by providing useful visibility into the company’s risk exposure. However, effective threat modeling requires a clear understanding of the potential risks and threats that a company can face.
Check Point offers threat modeling support as part of its range of security consulting services. To learn more or schedule a threat modeling session, contact a Check Point security expert today.
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