Cybersecurity has become a top concern in today's fast-paced IT world with the steep rise in hacking incidents: 30,000 hacked websites a day. As a result, businesses are looking for the best security practices to keep confidential data safe. This is why threat modelling is gaining popularity in the cybersecurity landscape.
Widely regarded as one of the standard security methods, threat modelling is a way to detect and understand security threats while protecting valuable information and assets. Organizations can implement threat modelling at any phase of the software development process, from start to finish.
Read this all-inclusive guide to learn the following:
Securing confidential information has become more critical than ever with new security threats in the cyber ecosystem. According to Cisco," The number of DDoS attacks is expected to reach 15.4 million by 2023."
While no network or system is immune to attacks, a robust and efficient security model is essential to reduce the risk of cyber breaches. The sudden need for network security has made threat modelling quite popular in the digital landscape. It's a way of identifying threats, analyzing vulnerabilities, and developing countermeasures to prevent cyber-attacks, thus optimizing network security.
Implementing threat modelling at the start of the software development process is recommended. This way, you can identify and solve threats before they become an issue.
Threat modelling is a continuous process of identifying threats, analyzing vulnerabilities, and taking actions to prevent or mitigate cyber attacks.
The threat modelling process mainly involves four steps:
With the constantly evolving new attack surfaces and security threats, many organizations face a tough time fighting against them.
Threat modelling allows organizations to identify security loopholes early in the software development process and prevent them by implementing secure coding practices. Here are some of the significant benefits of threat modelling:
Did you know that 95% of cybersecurity breaches are due to human error?
Security threats can be due to both internal and external sources. Whatever the source, a security threat can result in substantial financial, reputational, and customer losses. Businesses adopt threat modelling as a standard security process to identify and resolve potential cybersecurity risks before they become significant problems.
Multiple threat modelling methodologies and techniques can help organizations find threats. However, practically every method varies in quality and consistency.
Let's dig a bit deeper to understand various threat modelling methodologies better.
STRIDE: Developed by Microsoft, STRIDE is one of the best threat models to find threats in a system. STRIDE is an acronym for different security threats:
DREAD: Some popular organizations like OpenStack use the DREAD model. It's a way to rank and evaluate security threats in five different categories:
PASTA: PASTA is an acronym for Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis. It is a seven-step attacker-centric approach that identifies, counts, and ranks threats. The PASTA model works on seven simple steps.
Trike: Trike is a security auditing framework that uses the threat model as a risk management tool. The trike model uses DFD (data flow diagram) to illustrate data flow in an implementation model so that users can implement the same within a system.
VAST: VAST is short for Visual, Agile, and Simple Threat modelling. It provides actionable outputs as per the needs of software developers and cybersecurity experts. It allows the security teams to evaluate architectural and operational threats.
Attack tree: The attack tree is one of the oldest and most popular threat modelling methodologies. It is a conceptual diagram illustrating how attacks can occur in a system.
CVSS: Developed by NIS, CVSS stands for The Common Vulnerability Scoring System. It is a method to assign a score (ranging from 0 to 10, with ten being the worst) to all network vulnerabilities.
OCTAVE stands for the Operationally Critical Threat, Asset, and Vulnerability Evaluation. This model mainly addresses organizational risks, not technological risks.
DevSecOps is the process of integrating security practices at every phase of the software development life cycle. Implementing DevSecOps in your workflow reduces the chances of security vulnerabilities. It makes software delivery faster and easier.
In addition, implementing threat modelling in your DevSecOps culture will promote security awareness and help your security team better understand the security issues.
Moreover, it allows you to discover and defend against the most severe threats.
Learn about DevSecOps, by clicking here:
Your business is still vulnerable to security threats even if you have the best IT equipment, security systems, and antivirus. Even a minor security bug can shut down your business operations.
Be proactive and implement threat modelling as a risk assessment and management tool for security threats. It can do wonders for your organisation if executed correctly and frequently.