The Battle for New York: A Case Study of Applied Digital Threat Modeling at the Enterprise Level
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Presented at 27thUsenixSecuritySymposium 2018 by
Digital security professionals use threat modeling to assess and improve the security posture of an organization or product. However, no threat-modeling techniques have been systematically evaluated in a real-world, enterprise environment. In this case study, we introduce formalized threat modeling to New York City Cyber Command: the primary digital defense organization for the most populous city in the United States. We find that threat modeling improved self-efficacy; 20 of 25 participants regularly incorporated it within their daily duties 30 days after training, without further prompting. After 120 days, implemented participant-designed threat mitigation strategies provided tangible security benefits for NYC, including blocking 541 unique intrusion attempts, preventing the hijacking of five privileged user accounts, and addressing three public-facing server vulnerabilities. Overall, these results suggest that the introduction of threat modeling can provide valuable benefits in an enterprise setting.