Threat modeling’s motto should be, “The earlier the better, but not too late and never ignore.” Without threat modeling, your security is a gamble—and in today’s business environment, you’re sure to lose. When you design an application, you will face several security issues during different phases of the software development life cycle (SDLC), and so having threat modeling in the SDLC from the beginning can help to safeguard that applications are being developed, with security built in. Simply put, threat modeling is a procedure to identify threats and vulnerabilities in the earliest stage of the development life cycle to identify gaps and mitigate risk, which guarantees that a secure application is being built, saving both revenue and time. Why Threat Modeling? • It is better to find security flaws when there is time to fix them.

Order of the stick. • It can save time, revenue and the reputation of your company. • To build a secure application. • To bridge the gap between developers and security. • It provides a document of all the identified threats and rated threats. • It offers knowledge and awareness of the latest risks and vulnerabilities. How To Do Threat Modeling Many people think only security engineers can do threat modeling.

That’s not true. Anyone, from developer to software project manager, can threat-model. In fact, I would suggest they should also know a little bit of threat modeling as part of their work. Let’s look at the elements of threat modeling: Assets: What valuable data and equipment should be secured? Threats: What the attacker can do to the system? Vulnerabilities: What are the flaws in the system that can allow an attacker to realize a threat?

Steps to Threat Modeling Step 1: Identify the assets (database server, file servers, data lake stores, Active Directory, REST calls, configuration screens, Azure portal, authenticated and anonymous web user, Azure AAD client apps, database users, DB administrators) Step 2: Outline details of architecture on which the valuable asset is being processed. It may include the software framework, version and other architectural details (ASP.net web application connection to cloud data stores and third-party services using JWT tokens). Step 3: Break down the application regarding its process, including all the sub-processes that are running the application. We create a data flow diagram (DFD). Step 4: List identify threats in a descriptive way to review to process further. Step 5: Classify the threats with parallel instances so that threats can be identified in the application in a structured and repeatable manner.

Step 6: Rate the severity of the threat.

The client requires a threat model for the application, are there any standard TM tools for this? I know there is a freebie at the Microsoft site but that is a Windows App and it is also taylored a little towards how Windows Apps are written or IIS basewd web apps are written. Microsoft has long used threat models for its products and has made the company’s threat modeling process publicly available. The company experience demonstrates that the modeling has unexpected benefits beyond the immediate understanding of what threats are the most concerning.