Threat Modeling

Execute threat modeling to identify threats and vulnerabilities early in the development lifecycle and design phase, mitigate risks, protect assets, and guide countermeasures for secure applications and enterprise-wide security policies.

Identify assets as sources of business value and vulnerabilities, including data, devices, people, and processes, and recognize stepping stone assets like passwords and tokens.

Explore the threat modeling section and the assets lecture, review the course reviews and the quiz, and gain confidence to engage with this lecture series.

Explore attack vectors and vulnerabilities that enable data breaches, including phishing, malware, sql injection, cross-site scripting, credential theft, man-in-the-middle, and vendor risks.

Explore attack trees as a structured method to model security threats in threat modeling, using root and leaf nodes, logic gates, and cost analyses to map attacker goals.

Engage in a hands-on threat modeling exercise by designing and interpreting attack trees, assessing attack size, cost, and likelihood, and exploring step-by-step paths to access encrypted files and passwords.

Identify the attack surface as boundary points and interfaces exposed to attackers. Reduce risk with least privilege, service hardening, and targeted protections for network, software, and humans.

Explore the attack lifecycle, from reconnaissance and information gathering to developing a script, delivering and installing malicious capabilities, compromising targets, decrypting files with a captured password, and maintaining presence.

Define the threat modeling scope, then select a focused area to guide analysis. Use structured approaches and tools, reputable dictionaries, and checklists within the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle with stakeholders.

Explore threat modeling tools from whiteboards to bug trackers for clearer models. Survey Track, Elevation of Privilege, Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool, and a modular platform, with usability and outputs.

Explore the stride threat modeling approach, outlining six categories—spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, and elevation of privilege—and learn how to craft mitigations and security strategies.

Explore the dread threat modeling approach, detailing five categories—damage, reproducibility, exploitability, affected users, and discoverability—and how to rank threats to inform risk, controls, and budgeting.

Identify common but under-discussed mistakes in threat modeling, such as overreliance on attacker thinking. Avoid underestimating planning, neglecting legacy systems, and excluding insider threats; keep team diversity and plan updates.

Learn how asking the right questions drives threat modeling, covering architecture, data, authentication, authorization, encryption, input handling, and threat analysis.

Learn how the Delphi technique leverages an online panel of experts to collect structured input, run iterative questionnaires, and reach consensus for threat modeling decisions.

Explore ad-hoc threat modeling by identifying security objectives, defining the system scope, decomposing components, and identifying threats with both automated tools and human review.

Develop a practical approach to multi level threat analysis for large organizations, using hierarchical models from system and infrastructure levels to lower levels, capturing critical use cases and multiple stakeholders.

Install the Microsoft threat modeling tool on Windows using the standalone desktop version, download the latest 2016 release, and explore startup, model making, template making, and uninstall steps.

Learn to use the Microsoft threat modeling tool to build diagrams with stances, define components and boundaries, analyze data flows, and generate full or custom threat reports.

Use templates in the Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool to enhance models with domain-specific stencils and components, and learn how to apply templates to new or existing models.

Microsoft threat modeling activity guides you to build a secure web application model, identify requirements, data flows, and boundaries, and generate a comprehensive threat model report.

Learn to validate data models by tracing data origins, flows, and processing steps, exploring data use cases from analytics to UI, and linking validation to threat modeling, mitigation, and reporting.

Use the Microsoft threat modelling tool to build level zero and level one diagrams for a distributed corporate system with data flows, data stores, and boundaries in Azure.

Create a new template in the Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool by naming it and optionally adjusting the version, then add tasks, shapes, and stances.

Modify an existing template in the Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool to extend standards, create new threat categories, and adjust attributes, while leveraging generic and specialized entities.

Learn Microsoft SDL fundamentals, covering the security development lifecycle from training and requirements to design, implementation, verification, and release, with emphasis on threat modeling and secure software practices.

Explore Microsoft threat modeling resources, including the threat modeling tool and cloud security documents, plus automating secure development lifecycle checks in TypeScript.

Integrate the security development lifecycle into agile projects using Microsoft SDL, applying a lean threat modeling approach, updating models each sprint, and aligning security with product backlog and sprint planning.

Explore threat catalogs and reputable risk lists to improve communication and risk management, with examples from ISO 27000 series, ENISA, and NIST documents including the Guide for Conducting Risk Assessment.

Explore ENISA's threat catalog and the TRED catalog, detailing about 75 traits with trait details, sources, and vulnerability information linked to asset types.

Explore the NIST 800-series threat catalogue and attack lifecycle; categorize threats by attacker sources—hackers, criminals, terrorists, foreign governments, insiders—and their actions to improve risk assessment and threat modeling.

Identify threat sources and their motivations using the NIST threat catalogue, with 84 traits in seven groups to guide risk assessment, threat modeling, and understanding attack phases.

Learn to implement countermeasures to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and information systems, including backups, disaster recovery, encryption, access controls, monitoring, and auditing.

Learn how to select the right countermeasures for your organization by balancing cost, modularity, uniform protection, usability, independence, flexibility, and auditing, with an asset protection context.

Explore the NIST security controls and countermeasures, learn baselines by impact level, and navigate control families from access control to system and information integrity using search tools and enhancements.

Study threat modeling with STRIDE categories through brainstorming exercises to select countermeasures. Apply least-privilege practices and security controls to mitigate spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, DoS, and privilege elevation.

Brainstorm countermeasures for well-known threats in threat modeling, from insider actions to trojans, worms, environmental disasters, and SQL injection, using practical, service-level controls and recovery strategies.

Apply the data centric threat modeling approach from NIST to identify data boundaries, transmission, attack vectors, and mitigations, then evaluate security controls and customize weights for analysis.

Conclude this course by applying threat modeling to your projects, building on conceptual definitions, process and methodology, and the valuable resources shared throughout the journey.