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threat_modelling

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Threat modelling: identification and prioritisation

This section sets out a basic approach for contemplating cybersecurity.

The aim is to stop you from running out and buying whatever product some shiny suited salesperson might be promoting, but rather to think about your security needs holistically, so that you spend your time, money and effort where you can get the best results.

  • What threats you face and from whom
  • Determine the countermeasures available
  • Identify your priorities
  • Implement

You’ll sometimes see this described as “threat modelling” or understanding your “risk scenario”.

Why do you care?

The reason you do this is that, without knowing the threats against which you’re trying to protect, you don’t know what mitigations you need to have in place. And, since you probably can’t do everything at once, you’ll need to understand what are the greatest threats you face, and so which are deserving of the greatest attention, and what measures are “nice to haves”, which could be done at some point in the future.

Let’s consider some different examples.

Why you?

A normal domestic conveyancing transaction may not be of particular interest to an overseas government’s intelligence service, but may be very much of interest to someone hoping to steal the buyer’s funds.

If you are working on litigation against a government, might that government have an interest in trying to understand your case before it is formally presented? One would hope not, of course.

Could you simply be the weak link in the chain, which someone wants to break to gain access to the information which you hold? Some useful insider information which might affect share price, for example, or designs for a new or improved product?

Do you hold information about someone which might be valuable from the perspective of blackmail? Or of interest to the media?

Information useful to a competitor of a client?

Or could it be that the information you hold about a client might be useful in some other attack – someone wanting to get into the client, to exploit what information they have, and getting names and addresses and contact details from you is an easy way to do that?

Or are you just generally concerned about holding up the confidentiality of your clients’ matters, and ensuring that clients can communicate with you in a reasonably secure manner, to take advantage of their right to seek independent, expert legal advice? Threats might be more casual — someone reading over your shoulder on a train, for example, or listening in on a phone call you are having in a public place.

Who is your threat?

Is your attacker motivated, and focussed on you? Do they have lots of resources at their disposal? If so, chances are you are going to need quite substantial security measures.

Perhaps you are just of passing interest and that, if you have “good enough” security, the attacker will simply find another target — a less secure law firm, more vulnerable to their attack, for instance.

Perhaps it is not even an “attacker”, but rather a fellow commuter, or someone else present in the place you are working. What about private companies tracking what you do online? Are you happy if the operator of your favourite coffee shop’s Wi-Fi network is keeping an eye on what cases or statutes you are researching, or sites you visit, or even your communications with clients?

How are you vulnerable?

Once you’ve identified why you might be of interest, and who you might be defending against, the next step is to identify how you might be vulnerable.

Other pages discuss different areas in which a lawyer or a law firm might be open to attack, and give some examples of mitigations and defences.

When you’ve got a list of risks and potential mitigations, you can then prioritise and start to implement.

Prioritising your response

Chances are, you'll have quite a few risks on your list, so you'll want to prioritise your approach to tackling them.

A simple means of prioritisation is by multiplying the likelihood of a bad thing happening with the impact if that bad thing does happen.

Something which is likely to be exploited, and which would cause a high level of harm, is a greater priority than something either unlikely to happen, or which is unlikely to cause much harm if it did happen.

Writing it down

You might find it useful to write this down, so that you have a register of threats and risks, with reasons why you have included, or excluded certain things.

Repeating this exercise

You probably want to make this appraisal a regular exercise — perhaps yearly, or even more frequently.

If you think you fall into a higher risk category, it is probably something you’ll want to do even more often than that.

threat_modelling.1565112996.txt.gz · Last modified: 2021/07/06 09:26 (external edit)