Document as many potential threats to the system as possible. In the following article, we will take a look at what threat modeling is, undercover how to answer the above question with confidence, and why there are so many frameworks from which to choose. For example, if a threat required a skilled threat actor with tens of thousands of dollars of computing resources to implement, and the only reward was that they were able to gain access to information that is already public in some other form, the likelihood is low. If the architecture cannot be white-boarded, then it suggests that it is not well understood. What areas of the organization’s environment are vulnerable? Use that research to formulate your own questions. Before starting the threat modeling process it is important to identify business objectives of the applications you are assessing, and to identify security and compliance requirements that may be necessary due to business or government regulation. Gain an understanding of how the system works to perform a threat model, it is important to understand how the system works and interacts with its ecosystem. Assume the attacker has a zero-day because he does. From core to cloud to edge, BMC delivers the software and services that enable nearly 10,000 global customers, including 84% of the Forbes Global 100, to thrive in their ongoing evolution to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise. Any place where data is passed between two processes is typically a trust boundary. As cloud computing grows and more business is moved digitally, security threats will only grow. It is fundamental to identify who would want to exploit the assets of a company, how they might use them against the company, and if they would be capable of doing so. What are the most relevant threats to the organization’s security? Cybersecurity News, Data Security, Threat Detection, Last Week in Microsoft Teams: Week of October 12th, © 2020 Inside Out Security | Policies | Certifications, “This really opened my eyes to AD security in a way defensive work never did.”. While data at rest is sometimes considered to be less vulnerable than data in transit, attackers often find data at rest a more valuable target than data in motion. To start with creating a high-level information flow diagram, like the following: Assets involved in the information flow should be defined and evaluated according to their value of confidentiality, integrity and availability. You should be familiar with the following terms that will be used throughout this cheat sheet. Area: Software components: describes the layers and subsystems of the application. Document security controls that may be put in place to reduce the likelihood or impact Controls are safeguards or countermeasures that you put in place in order to avoid, detect, counteract, or minimize potential threats against your information, systems, or other assets. Threat modeling for cybersecurity is a rapidly evolving discipline: you can create threat models for almost any scenario you can imagine. Area: Functional Requirements: describes the design's object model. Optimally, you will create your threat models and determine which mitigations are needed during an early stage of the development of a new system, application, or feature. The principles in the document apply equally to designing and building systems such as network infrastructures or server clusters as they do to designing or developing desktop, mobile, or web applications. Second, remember to consider the entire system and its working parts as a whole, not just in isolation. Where possible add assets to the identified information flows. For the assessor, this is considered as the last step in the assessment process. Considering the attacker’s motivation when evaluating likelihood. Depending on the business you are in, attacks that expose user information could potentially result in a physical threat of harm or loss of life to your users, greatly raising the impact of threats that would allow such exposure. These techniques will include data flows, checklists, diagrams, and classifications, with personal preferences as well as the purpose of the threat model guiding the decision-making. Provide the needed controls in forms of code upgrades and configuration updates to reduce risks to acceptable levels. The DREAD formula is divided into 5 main categories: Then the risk level is determined using defined thresholds below. Please let us know by emailing blogs@bmc.com. Data protection in transit is the protection of this data while it’s traveling from network to network or being transferred from a local storage device to a cloud storage device – wherever data is moving, effective data protection measures for in-transit data are critical as data is often considered less secure while in motion. Indirect loss may also result from an attack, and needs to be considered as part of the impact. Threat modeling is a structured approach of identifying and prioritizing potential threats to a system, and determining the value that potential mitigations would have in reducing or neutralizing those threats. During this phase conduct the following activities: In most cases after defining the attack vectors, the compromised user role could lead to further attacks into the application. Consider things like what happens if an employee takes a laptop home and works off of your secure network or when they don’t change a password often enough. Not all threat models apply to every system, and not all threat modeling will develop a new threat model. Impact and damage can take a variety of forms. Area: describes the set of scenarios and/or use cases that represent some significant, central functionality of the system. Nevertheless, threat modeling is one of the most important parts of the day to day practice of security. The documentation may be out of date, requiring you to gather new information to update the documentation. Intended to be used as a cost-effective tool to help software/IT teams implement features that protect systems, at its core threat modeling is very simple. Here are some threat modeling example questions to get you thinking about that process: In order to understand the system you are threat modeling, you need to break down the system into smaller parts. Be realistic and thorough with the “What Ifs?” – and let those questions drive threat modeling forward. Commonly thought of as the act of being prepared and prioritizing threats, if you do some research on the topic, you will quickly realize there are a variety of expert opinions, framework structures, and methodologies out there. For example, if you store your user's passwords as hashes in a database, two users who have the same password will have the same hash. Related Artifacts: Implementation model, components. Use Means, Motive, and Opportunities to understand Threats posed by Attackers. In any event, this cheat sheet outlines steps you can take to create design documents if they are needed. Lastly, in question number four, it is time to look back and address quality, ability to carry out, progress, and most importantly, rank the threats. Third, think outside of the box. Audience: All the stakeholders of the system, including the end users. What are the high-values assets within the organization? These can be the different security zones that have been designed, Relook at the actors you have identified in #2 for consistency, Identify the information elements and their classification as per your information classification policy. Taking the energy and resources to correctly identify and allocate efforts to ensure your organization’s safety and systems’ security is invaluable. Define access rights that the application will grant to external entities and internal entities. Some “What ifs” might not require a response at all. With the “What if?” questions prepared, the team needs to then spec out the impact of that scenario, how to manage the scenario, and the protections needed to defend against that scenario. Here we will highlight two risk methodology that could be used: DREAD, is about evaluating each existing vulnerability using a mathematical formula to retrieve the vulnerability’s corresponding risk. A threat may result in damage to physical assets, or may result in obvious financial loss. Successful threat modeling requires identifying potential threats, analyzing the possible effects of those threats, and determining if the threat is significant and requires a neutralization strategy. Causes can combine and affect another cause, so can system and application parts. These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion. Threat modeling is asking and answering questions about the thing you are working to protect. In reality, there is an unlimited number of threats that could cause damage to the security of an organization. What if someone breaks into the database? It shows each place that data is input into or output from each process or subsystem. Due to the rapid advancement of technology, the increased risk of cyber-attacks and system breaches has become a day to day issue that constantly needs to be addressed. 186 publication is to provide information on the basics of system threat modeling so that organizations can 187 successfully use it as part of their risk management processes. By working through the system all the way down to the smallest components, you’ll have a decent framework to continue building the threat model. If this question cannot be answered then answering the rest of the questions will be difficult. The value is actually twofold. Enumerate Attacks posed by the most dangerous attacker in designated areas of the logical and physical maps of the target of evaluation. Daunting as it may sound, ultimately, the end result of a strong threat model is an overview of a system as well as profiles of attackers with goals, along with a full list of vulnerabilities, outside threats, and potential inside breaches. This will save a lot of time and effort for all teams across an organization. Due to the uniqueness in nature, most threat models do not look the same but generally include the following basics: A four-step process that can be done at any stage of system development and implementation or lifespan of an organization, the sooner threat modeling takes place the better, even if it’s simple at first then built on. Stephen Watts (Birmingham, AL) has worked at the intersection of IT and marketing for BMC Software since 2012. Identify the trusted boundaries of your system/application/module/ecosystem that you may want to start off with. Create risks in risk log for every identified threat or attack to any assets. To start, in the tech world most experts agree that identifying threat modeling vulnerabilities is the systematic and structured answering of the following four questions: In the business world and when looking at an entire organization, the four questions turn into: All easy to remember questions that are designed to be helpful in identifying assets along with weaknesses, each can be applied to a variety of projects, including waterfall or agile builds. With that, beyond the core of what threat modeling is, the complexity of answering “what is your threat model?” starts when addressing all the different technical aspects of your unique organization as well as keeping in mind how different causes combine to create new threats. Using risk matrix rank risks from most severe to least severe based on Means, Motive & Opportunity. Varonis has developed hundreds of threat models to detect potential malware, cyberattacks, security vulnerabilities, and unusual behavior. Get a highly customized data risk assessment run by engineers who are obsessed with data security. PASTA introduces a complete risk analysis and evaluation procedures that you can follow to evaluate the risk for each of the identified threat. It requires that you step out of the day-to-day whirlwind of data security and imagine the future. This cheat sheet aims to provide guidance on how to create threat models for both existing systems or applications as well as new systems.

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