Threat modeling state of practice in Dutch organizations

Threat modeling is a key technique to apply a security by design mindset, allowing the systematic identification of security and privacy threats based on design-level abstractions of a system. Despite threat modeling being a best practice, there are few studies analyzing its application in practice. This paper investigates the state of practice on threat modeling in large Dutch organizations through semi-structured interviews. Compared to related work, which mainly addresses the execution of threat modeling activities, our findings reveal multiple human and organizational factors which significantly impact the embedding of threat modeling within organizations. First, while threat modeling is appreciated for its ability to uncover threats, it is also recognized as an important activity for raising security awareness among developers. Second, leveraging developers’ intrinsic motivation is considered more important than enforcing threat modeling as a compliance requirement. Third, organizations face numerous challenges related to threat modeling, such as managing the scope, obtaining relevant architectural documentation, scaling, and systematically following up on the results. Organizations can use these findings to assess their current threat modeling activities, and help inform decisions to start, extend, or reorient them. Furthermore, threat modeling facilitators and researchers may base future efforts on the challenges identified in this study.