Difference between revisions of "Threat modeling the quick and dirty way"

Revision as of 18:03, 9 June 2015

Basic choreography

Step 1. Set up a table

Threat	Likelihood	Impact	Protection
Having to drink	high	Developer will drop dead within a week, deadline will not be made. The human body needs water to survive. The maximum time an individual can go without water seems to be a week — an estimate that would certainly be shorter in difficult conditions, like broiling heat.	**** Blend together half a gallon of water, three and a half tablespoons of macadamia nut oil and a 16-ounce bag of powder called Schmoylent. Then pour the beige beverage into jars and chill them before bringing the containers to work the next day http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/jobs/No-time-to-eat-Silicon-Valley-drinks-its-meals/articleshow/47424226.cms
Having to eat food	high	Developer will drop dead within three weeks, deadline will not be made. A human can go for more than three weeks without food (Mahatma Gandhi survived 21 days of complete starvation)	**** Blend together half a gallon of water, three and a half tablespoons of macadamia nut oil and a 16-ounce bag of powder called Schmoylent. Then pour the beige beverage into jars and chill them before bringing the containers to work the next day http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/jobs/No-time-to-eat-Silicon-Valley-drinks-its-meals/articleshow/47424226.cms
Needing sleep	high	Like breathing, sleep is essential to humans. It has even been said that one could survive three times longer without food than one could without sleep. One of the better known experiments on this subject, found that depriving rats entirely of sleep resulted in their death, or near-dying state, within 11-32 days (Everson et al. 1989).	* No long term alternatives known, but the deadline is still four weeks off. We tried coffee and coke in the previous development cycle.
Bathroom breaks	medium high	How many times do people go to the bathroom per day? Loads, and all those little breaks can add up to an hour or two per developer per day.	** Stomata. Costly. Management has suggested we need more surveillance equipment to study the problem.

The first column contains a short description of the threat, the second the likelihood of it occurring, the third what impact it would have if it did happen, and the fourth an assessment (grade) of the time and energy you would need to protect yourself from the threat (for instance you can have no stars denote that there is no protection from that threat, hence it will cost nothing).

Step 2. Fill in the table

I recommend doing a brainstorm on threats as initial filling of the threat columns in the table, before thinking about the other columns.

Step 3. Reorder the list according to your set of priorities

Choose your ordering strategy carefully. Several strategies are possible.

If this is a learning experience or you are a fan of "only time for putting out fires" cultures, no need for ordering.
In a low risk environment (no immediate death threats) an "on demand" strategy works well. In this strategy you can use "low hanging fruit" and set up protection for items with a big impact and/or high likelihood of occurrence first.
In a high risk environment or if any of the items in the list of possible impacts reads " loss of life" or some life-altering experience or you have turned procrastination into an art, best choose an "anticipating strategy", meaning do more research and detailed scenario planning to find possible threats and solutions overlooked.

Examples

Protesting in the united states

Threat	Likelihood	Impact	Protection

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 | Having to drink || high || Developer will drop dead within a week, deadline will not be made.
-The human body needs water to survive. At least 60% of the adult body is made of it and every living cell in the body needs it to keep functioning. Water acts as a lubricant for our joints, regulates our body temperature through sweating and respiration, and helps to flush waste.
+The human body needs water to survive.
 The maximum time an individual can go without water seems to be a week — an estimate that would certainly be shorter in difficult conditions, like broiling heat.