AZURE HEROES
  • Home-Updates
  • Blog
    • Azure Blog
    • Azure Heroes Events >
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #1
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #2
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #3
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #4
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #5
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #6
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #7
  • Who We Are!
  • eBooks
  • Azure All In One!
    • Azure Disk & Storage
    • Azure Network
    • Azure VPN
    • Azure VMs
  • Free Azure Support!
  • Contact Us
  • Events
    • Beginners Event
    • Developers Event
    • Special Event
    • Azure Workshop #4
    • Azure Workshop #5
    • Azure Workshop #6
    • Azure Workshop #7
    • Azure Workshop #8
    • Upcoming Events
  • Registration Form
  • Privacy Policy
  • Home-Updates
  • Blog
    • Azure Blog
    • Azure Heroes Events >
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #1
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #2
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #3
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #4
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #5
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #6
      • Azure Heroes Sessions #7
  • Who We Are!
  • eBooks
  • Azure All In One!
    • Azure Disk & Storage
    • Azure Network
    • Azure VPN
    • Azure VMs
  • Free Azure Support!
  • Contact Us
  • Events
    • Beginners Event
    • Developers Event
    • Special Event
    • Azure Workshop #4
    • Azure Workshop #5
    • Azure Workshop #6
    • Azure Workshop #7
    • Azure Workshop #8
    • Upcoming Events
  • Registration Form
  • Privacy Policy

Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Threat Modeling

10/3/2022

0 Comments

 
This article in our series focused on Microsoft’s free security tools is on the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) Threat Modeling Tool.
Picture
Threat modeling is a core element of the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). It’s an engineering technique you can use to help you identify threats, attacks, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures that could affect your application. You can use threat modeling to shape your application's design, meet your company's security objectives, and reduce risk.
Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool
The Microsoft Threat Modeling Tool makes threat modeling easier for all developers through a standard notation for visualizing system components, data flows, and security boundaries. It also helps threat modelers identify classes of threats they should consider based on the structure of their software design. We designed the tool with non-security experts in mind, making threat modeling easier for all developers by providing clear guidance on creating and analyzing threat models
There are five major threat modeling steps:
  •  Defining security requirements. 
  •  Creating an application diagram. 
  •  Identifying threats. 
  •  Mitigating threats. 
  •  Validating that threats have been mitigated. 
Threat modeling should be part of your routine development lifecycle, enabling you to progressively refine your threat model and further reduce risk.
Threat modeling is not a one-time process, it should be iterative starting early in the application development and continuing throughout its lifecycle. This is because it is difficult to identify all potential threats in a single pass, and applications change over time to accommodate evolving business requirements, requiring the threat modeling process to be repeated. Whether you use the SDL or not, this tool is still useful for understanding threats to a networked system.

Some of the tool's key capabilities and innovations include:
  • Automation: Guides users in drawing a model and provides feedback.
  • STRIDE Analysis: A guided analysis of threats and mitigations.
  • Reporting: Facilitates the reporting of security activities and testing during the verification phase.
  • Unique Methodology: Allows users to visualize and understand threats better.
  • Designed for Developers: Focuses on software and builds on activities that software developers and architects are familiar with, such as creating software architecture diagrams.
  • Design Analysis: The Microsoft SDL approach to threat modeling is a design analysis technique that focuses on identifying security issues during the design phase.
Overall, the SDL Threat Modeling Tool provides a focused and streamlined approach to threat modeling that is designed to be used by software developers and architects.

To quickly summarize, the approach involves creating a diagram, identifying threats, mitigating them and validating each mitigation. Here’s a diagram that highlights this process:

Picture
Demo
First: Download the Threat Modeling Tool
Starting the threat modeling process
1- Run the tool
2- Click on Create a Model

Picture
3- Start Building a model
Note: you can end users/developers or web access/request
Picture
4- Click on Data flow icon
Picture
5- Analyzing threats
Once he clicks on the analysis view from the icon menu selection (file with magnifying glass), he is taken to a list of generated threats the Threat Modeling Tool found based on the default template, which uses the SDL approach called STRIDE (Spoofing, Tampering, Info Disclosure, Repudiation, Denial of Service and Elevation of Privilege). The idea is that software comes under a predictable set of threats, which can be found using these 6 categories
Picture
This article explains the reason for not discussing assets in the threat modeling process. It is noted that many software engineers have a better understanding of their software than of the concept of assets and what assets an attacker may target.
Similar to threat modeling a house, you can start by thinking about your family, precious possessions, or valuable artwork. Alternatively, you can focus on potential intruders and the security system, or physical features such as the pool or front porch. These are equivalent to considering assets, attackers, or software design in threat modeling. Any of these approaches can be effective.
The software design approach to threat modeling presented in this article is simpler compared to previous methods by Microsoft. This approach has been found to work well for many teams and it is hoped that it will be useful for yours as well.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Mohammad Al Rousan is a Microsoft MVP (Azure), Microsoft Certified Solution Expert (MCSE) in Cloud Platform & Azure DevOps & Infrastructure, An active community blogger and speaker. Al Rousan has over 8 years of professional experience in IT Infrastructure and very passionate about Microsoft technologies and products.

    Picture
    Picture
    Top 10 Microsoft Azure Blogs

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    May 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019

    Categories

    All
    AKS
    Azure
    Beginner
    CDN
    DevOps
    End Of Support
    Fundamentals
    Guide
    Hybrid
    License
    Migration
    Network
    Security
    SQL
    Storage
    Virtual Machines
    WAF

    RSS Feed

    Follow
    Free counters!
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.