Risk Centric Threat Modeling: Process for Attack Simulation and Threat Analysis

FOREWORD

The cover page of this book includes a drawing from George Kruger Gray's “The Siege of the Castle.” The picture depicts castles under siege and illustrates the challenges to protect against the different attacks used in the Middle Ages such as siege equipment; mobile armored shelters, ladders, and wheeled ramps, by attackers trying to scale the walls built to protect the castles. This picture is a stark reminder of the challenges that cyber-security faces to defend from cyber-attacks of the modern era. In the Middle Ages, attackers stormed the castle from different positions, bypassing the defensive walls, and breaking into the main entry castle doors. In the modern era, attackers strike from the different data interfaces that are available, breaking into the applications user and data interfaces, attacking the firewalls, and application access controls. This picture is also a reminder that defenses such as castle walls, fortified gateways, towers, turrets, arrow loops, drawbridges, and moats become obsolete with the emergence of new threats. In the case of castle defenses, this was the increased presence of gunpowder weapons, such as cannons, in the fourteenth century. In the case of cyber-defenses, the emergence of sophisticated cyber-crime tools that can successfully bypass security defenses, such as anti-viruses, firewalls, and user authentication; require that we be vigilant, monitoring, and improving our defenses before they are rendered obsolete.

Today, businesses ...