Infrastructure-as-code (and GitOps) extend the use of source control (git) and code (well, manifest files) into a new field. This changed radically how we create infrastructure in the cloud, by making the process more robust and less error prone, and also easier for developers. Can we do the same for threat modeling? How can threat-modeling-as-code change and improve the way we do threat modeling today?
Let’s start with a really short introduction to threat modeling. Threat modeling is a practice that help us take a system design and look for possible security issues, by asking these 4 questions:
- What are we building?
- What can go wrong?
- What are we doing about it?
- Are we doing a good job?
Conduction a threat model helps to find issues sooner – and in most cases, detect issues that are hard to find using other practices. This is why conducting a threat model is a critical part in building a secre software. If you’re not familiar with this practice, I’m highly recommending this post by Adam Shostack, one of the authorities in the field. OWASP Threat Modeling project (and channel) is also an excellent learning resource.