I created something beautiful, and I want to give the knowledge to you.
How did it start?
While analyzing the SDLC in a company I worked for, I realized a few dangerous gaps in our threat modeling process. I also talked with my network of professionals in other companies and understood that they have the same or similar gaps.
I decided to fix those gaps by creating a miniature product that I released under a creative commons license.
What were the gaps?
Traditional Thread Modeling approaches widely used today provide a false sense of security, leading to products and services that attacker personas can easily exploit.
I identified four gaps and will share two of them with you:
Gap 1: Limited Exposure
Most of the time, threat modeling is made by a single user because they have the most knowledge of the system or compete with others to get some company incentive.
A dialog is a key to establishing the common understandings that lead to value, while documents record those understandings and enable measurement.
The framework’s goal is to make sure everyone has a chance to participate in the exercise – to raise the entire team’s security posture and strengthen the product lines in general.
The other benefit is that this could be adopted as an internal standard for all the team inside the company and make sure we do the threat analysis with the proper attention and using the same techniques.
Gap 2: Not aligned with the way we deliver software.
The current approach to Threat Modeling is close to a Waterfall model, and it’s far away from the dynamicity of the modern (Agile) way of doing software.
Threat modeling must align with an organization’s development practices and follow design changes in scoped iterations to manageable portions of the system.
We do the modeling in the beginning, and no one is updating them iteratively. Protecto engages the team regularly to repeat the exercise and focus on the most critical security issues first.
How do I fix this?
Protecto contains three main items:
- A set of concept and visual tools to use with your team to make threat modeling a fun and helpful exercise.
- A process to follow to make sure your team skills are applied where they will be most beneficial.
- A 90-min workshop containing two modules and it starts with a beer tap protection exercise to help you and your team understand the process and the tools.
Where can you learn more?
If you want to improve your threat modeling practices and start developing more secure products with Protecto, there are two options:
- I will be holding a Protecto Workshop during HackConf 2021 in October. You can join this event and see it in action. See more here .
- Or you could contact me (shoot me an e-mail to bogomil @ this website), and I can organize a workshop for your team/s. (I have trained more than 200 people from around the world already). Click here to download a PDF with some more info about the product.
Want to stop the attackers? Could you not give them something to attack?