Threat Modeling

Threat modeling is a structured approach to identifying and prioritizing potential security threats to a system. Instead of reacting to attacks after they happen, threat modeling helps you anticipate vulnerabilities during the design phase—when fixes are cheapest and most effective.

This guide covers three essential threat modeling methodologies that security professionals use daily. Whether you're designing a new microservice, evaluating a third-party integration, or hardening existing infrastructure, these techniques will help you think like an attacker.

By the end of this guide, you'll be able to conduct threat modeling sessions, prioritize security risks, and communicate findings to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What You'll Learn

This guide consists of the following parts:

1. STRIDE - Categorizing threats systematically
2. DREAD - Scoring and prioritizing risks
3. Attack Trees - Visualizing attack paths
4. Practical Exercises - Hands-on threat modeling scenarios

Why Threat Modeling Matters

Consider these scenarios:

• A startup launches without analyzing how attackers might abuse their API
• An enterprise adds a new feature without considering data flow implications
• A DevOps team deploys infrastructure without identifying privilege escalation paths

In each case, threat modeling would have revealed vulnerabilities before they became expensive incidents. Studies show that fixing a security bug in production costs 30x more than fixing it during design.

Who This Guide Is For

This guide is designed for:

• DevOps engineers integrating security into CI/CD pipelines
• Developers who want to design more secure systems
• Security engineers looking to formalize their threat analysis
• Architects evaluating system designs for security risks

No prior security expertise is required—we'll build from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Let's learn to think like an attacker!