Amateur Security Archaeologists, trying not to break things.

Tag: SOC (Page 3 of 3)

Ally with attack trees to threat model more effectively

To be clear, I don’t want you to raze the Amazon Rainforest here. What I am referring to for this blog post is another visualization technique. Where as DFDs focused on understanding the flow of information through your systems, Attack Trees are another graphical representation to uncover how an attacker might exploit weaknesses in a system to achieve specific malicious objectives.

Weird tree-borne monster getting ready to attack something.
Larry in accounting is tired of being scapegoated as the #1 most common threat vector
Continue reading

Get with the Flow

We’ve talked about Microsoft’s view of threat modeling, but this next one might appeal to folks with a background in software that doesn’t crash – sorry, I jest, i jest! (or do I?) Well in this useful method, we’re all about understanding the flow of data across our systems. We’re talking Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) used in software engineering and systems analysis.

Continue reading

What is Threat Modeling?

As Sun Tzu might advise, “If know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Let’s focus on “knowing yourself” first. We introduced this as an important step to Threat Hunting in a prior post. All organizations should start by identifying and scoping the environment’s key assets, data types, and security controls (both technical and process related). What are you trying to protect? Why are they important? Who needs or uses those things? Threat Modeling is the proactive process that helps you understand and address security risks before they can be exploited by attackers. This requires an understanding of both the environment to be protected and the way threats might overcome those defenses.

Continue reading

On the topic of Threat Hunting

All of us encounter the use (and misuse) of terms like threat hunting, threat modeling, threat intelligence, and threat picture.

  • Threat hunting is about leveraging knowledge of adversaries and the target system to proactively identify (and hopefully eradicate) threats before damage is incurred.
  • Threat Modeling is a structured approach used to identify, assess, and mitigate potential threats and vulnerabilities in a system, application, or environment – outlining the hypothetical ways that a threat might attack us.
  • Threat Intelligence (often called Cyber Threat Intelligence or CTI) characterizes the potential adversaries or troublesome events that might exploit those weaknesses, the organization’s most likely adversaries, attack vectors, and dependencies must be evaluated against that context.
  • The likely adversaries portion of threat modeling is often called the Threat Picture – an externally-focused view of the most likely attacks your organization will face. 
Continue reading
Newer posts »
Verified by MonsterInsights