They teach a single, one-size-fits-all process.

The challenge with threat modeling consultants is that most of the ones I have encountered do not understand how to tailor threat modeling to a given enterprise. Over the last several years, a cottage industry of threat modeling consultants and purchasable tools has sprouted up. With all the diversity of OS and platforms, plus mobile, a web-based solution is needed.

This is a deal breaker for most of the companies that want to adopt an enterprise approach to threat modeling. It’s not a bad tool, but it only runs on Windows and focuses its use cases on Windows services and Azure cloud solutions. It even created the first tool on the market, and it has updated it a few times over the years. Microsoft pioneered this idea within its SDL years ago, including the development of the STRIDE methodology, which drives threat modeling. The challenge with teaching an entire organization to threat model is that there were no decent, simple tools that simplified the process and were usable, until now. Tooling is important because it lays the foundation of how to perform the threat modeling process and makes it available to a large group of people simultaneously. They choose more secure design options without thinking about it. In the beginning, developers use the process to assist in understanding the steps and repeating the results.Īs developers become more proficient with threat modeling, the security light bulb goes on over their heads, and their thinking changes. Threat modeling is most impactful when it moves from a developer process to a developer state of mind. I’ve found in my 20-plus-year career in security that threat modeling is more than just a tool it’s a state of mind. Threat modeling technology is just applying these same principles to software. You threat-model all the time as you consider how these different events could damage your person. You heard a dog barking from the direction where you needed to walk. You heard cars rushing by on the street, exceeding the speed limit.

You closed the door behind you and you began to threat-model the area around you. What if I told you that you already know how to threat model, and that you threat-model every day? Think about when you left the house this morning.

When threat modeling is firing on all cylinders, an organization is creating more secure software. Threat modeling, the process of discovering potential security vulnerabilities in a design and eliminating those vulnerabilities before writing any code, fits best during the stage of planning and designing a new feature. Not that I sit around and dream of threat modeling all day, but I dream of embedding a process of security threat modeling within an entire development organization. Threat modeling has always been a dream of mine.

Microsoft sdl threat modeling tool