Risk Modeling, not "Threat Modeling"


Thanks to the great new book Metasploit (review pending), I learned of the Penetration Testing Execution Standard. According to the site, "It is a new standard designed to provide both businesses and security service providers with a common language and scope for performing penetration testing (i.e. security evaluations)." I think this project has a lot of promise given the people involved.

I wanted to provide one comment through my blog, since this topic is one I've covered previously. One of the goals of the standard is to name and explain the steps performed in a penetration test. One of them is currently called "threat modeling," and is partly explained using this diagram:



When I saw elements called "business assets," "threat agents," "business process," and so on, I realized this is more of a risk model, not just a "threat model."

I just tagged a few older posts as discussing threat model vs risk model linguistics, so they might help explain my thinking. This issue isn't life or death, but I think it would be more accurate to call this part of the PTES "Risk Modeling."

Comments

Osama Salah said…
Reminds me of the FAIR Risk Management Taxonomy, which I mapped out here:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B23AyRPec4wRNGM4MGVkNTEtNmUwNS00MTg5LWE2MWItNGQ5YjU4NTQyM2Ex&hl=en_US
3:58 PM
iamit said…
RIchard, thank you very much for the comment, and yes -you are correct that the threat modeling section is based on a wider risk modeling thinking.
I do think though that for the context of the section within the pets it would still be ok to call it threat model, and the risk model is what you eventually get to at the end of the pen test, and would be reflected in the final report, and of course the takeaways for the organization and how it plans to apply the insights from the pen test to it's risk management practice.
Keep up the good work!
5:37 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technical or pol
Read more