Today's offices are digitally sophisticated. Nearly every activity relies on technology and data sharing. Cybercriminals ("bad actors") can breach these systems from several entry points, including computers, smartphones, cloud applications, and network infrastructure.
It's estimated that cybercriminals can penetrate 93% of company networks. These breaches can damage a company's reputation, profitability, and productivity, and even destroy a business entirely.
One approach that can help organizations fight these intrusions is threat modeling. Threat modeling is a process used in cybersecurity that identifies potential threats and vulnerabilities to an organization's assets and systems.
WEBIT Services has helped Chicago-area businesses protect their data for over 25 years. In that time, it has used security frameworks and educated clients on solid cybersecurity practices.
By reading this article, you will learn how to use threat modeling to mitigate the risk of falling victim to a costly cyber incident.
How to Use Threat Modeling to Improve IT Security
1. Identify Assets That Need Protection
The first step is identifying the IT assets most critical to the business. This includes sensitive data, intellectual property, or financial information. Essentially, you are recognizing the resources cybercriminals are most likely to target.
Don't forget to include phishing-related assets, such as company email accounts. Business email compromise is a fast-growing attack. It capitalizes on breached company email logins.
2. Identify Potential Threats
The next step is to identify potential threats to these assets. Some common threats could be cyberattacks, such as phishing, ransomware, malware, or social engineering.
Another category of threats could be physical breaches or insider threats where employees or vendors have access to sensitive information.
Remember, threats aren't always malicious. Human error causes approximately 88% of data breaches. Human error may include:
- The use of weak passwords
- Unclear cloud use policies
- Lack of employee training
- Poor or non-existent BYOD policies
3. Assess Likelihood and Impact
Once you've identified potential threats, assess the likelihood and impact of these threats. Businesses must understand how likely each threat is to occur and its potential impact on their operations, reputation, and financial stability.
This analysis will help rank the risk management and mitigation strategies.
Base the threat likelihood on current cybersecurity statistics and security frameworks like NIST and CIS. IT risk assessments and vulnerability testing will help identify your existing risk profile and ways to address potential risks.
4. Prioritize Risk Management Strategies
Prioritize risk management strategies based on the likelihood and impact of each potential threat.
Most businesses can't tackle everything at once due to time and cost constraints, so ranking solutions based on the biggest impact on cybersecurity is essential.
Some common strategies include implementing the following:
- Access controls
- Firewalls
- Intrusion detection systems
- Employee training and awareness programs
- Endpoint device management
Businesses must also determine which strategies are most cost-effective and align with their business goals.
5. Continuously Review and Update the Model
Threat modeling is not a one-time process. Cyber threats are constantly evolving.
Businesses must continuously review and update their threat models to ensure effective security measures are aligned with their business objectives.
4 Benefits of Threat Modeling for Businesses
Threat modeling is an essential process for businesses to reduce their cybersecurity risk. Identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities to their assets and systems is vital. It helps them rank risk management strategies and reduce the likelihood and impact of cyber incidents.
Here are a few benefits of adding threat modeling to a cybersecurity strategy.
1. Improved Understanding of Threats and Vulnerabilities
Threat modeling can help businesses gain a better understanding of specific threats. It also uncovers vulnerabilities that could impact their assets. It identifies gaps in their security measures and helps uncover risk management strategies.
Ongoing threat modeling can also help companies stay out in front of new threats. Artificial intelligence is birthing new types of cyber threats every day.
2. Cost-effective Risk Management
Addressing risk management based on the likelihood and impact of threats reduces costs. It can optimize company security investments and help businesses divide resources effectively and efficiently.
3. Business Alignment
Threat modeling can help ensure that security measures align with the business objectives. It can reduce the potential impact of security measures on business operations. It also helps coordinate security, goals, and operations.
4. Reduced Risk of Cyber Incidents
By implementing targeted risk management strategies, businesses can reduce risk, including attack likelihood and the potential impact of cybersecurity incidents. This will help protect their assets and reduce a security breach's negative consequences.
Next Steps for Utilizing Threat Modeling
Threat modeling is a strategy that allows businesses to identify and analyze their IT risk profile. By doing so, they uncover vulnerabilities that may lead to a cyberattack and its potential impact on their IT system, profits, and business.
Threat modeling should be covered within IT risk assessments. Your IT provider or internal IT team should perform these assessments quarterly and clearly explain the results and how to address existing risks.
If your IT provider or team does perform risk assessments or understand them, that is cause for concern. They could be missing a critical step in protecting your company's data. This could also indicate that it's time to find a different provider.
WEBIT Services has established cybersecurity practices rooted in frameworks for hundreds of clients. In addition, it is passionate about education and effective cybersecurity.
If you are looking for a new provider or have questions about cybersecurity, schedule a free 30-minute consultation to see how WEBIT can help.
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