Michael worked as a security engineer at big tech companies for over ten years. He spent a lot of time fixing security problems after they happened. When he learned about threat modeling, it changed how he thought about security. Instead of just resolving issues, he started finding ways to prevent them. This new approach helped his whole team design better systems. He still uses these methods today.
The Breaking Point
As the senior security engineer at our big tech company, I worry about finding serious security problems in our live systems. We have a good testing program and skilled team members, but some security issues are still in production. It’s frustrating that despite our best efforts, we keep discovering these issues after deployment instead of catching them earlier.
The significant change came after we had a security breach in our system. The difficulty wasn’t with any single service: it came from a tiny flaw in how our services communicated with each other. When we looked at each part separately, everything seemed fine.
The issue only showed up when the services worked together. This taught us an important lesson: we needed a better way to look at our whole system’s security, not just individual pieces.
After the breach, I spent much time looking at our security process,” Michael says. “I found something significant: we could have caught most of our serious security problems early on when designing the system. Instead, we spent a lot of time and money resolving issues we could have prevented.
The Transformation Journey
I started looking for better ways to prevent security problems,” Michael says. “I found a course about threat modeling. What I liked was that it taught real skills we could use at work, not just theory. During the first week, I used one of the course methods called STRIDE to look at our system.
In just a few hours, I found three possible security concerns similar to the one that caused our breach. That’s when I knew this wasn’t just another certificate to earn – it was precisely what our team needed.
The Threat Modeling Professional Course Was Challenging but Really Changed How We Worked:
Foundation Phase
- Understanding threat modeling methodologies (STRIDE, PASTA, VAST, RTMP)
- Learning a systematic approach to identifying security requirements
- Mastering threat identification and risk assessment
- Hands-on practice with threat modeling tools
Advanced Implementation
- Creating and validating threat models for complex systems
- Integrating threat modeling into Agile development
- Automated threat modeling workflows
- Building threat modeling templates for different architectures
What made the course really useful,” Michael says, “was that it showed us how to use threat modeling in real situations. We learned which tools actually work, and how to explain security risks clearly to team members and managers.
Immediate Impact
Using threat modeling made a big difference in our work:
- 70% reduction in post-deployment security vulnerabilities.
- 45% decrease in security-related project delays.
- 60% improvement in mean time to security assessment.
- Significant cost savings from early vulnerability detection.
Cultural Transformation
The new threat modeling approach changed how everyone at work thought about security:
- Teams started asking for training on their own because they saw how useful it was.
- System designers now think about security when they first plan new features.
- Project leaders make sure there’s time for security checks in their schedules.
- New security team members learn threat modeling as part of their basic training.
When I help train new security engineers,” Michael says, “I tell them something important: You’re not just here to find security problems. You’re here to help build things securely from the start, so those problems don’t happen in the first place.
What Convinced You to Finally Enroll in the Threat Modeling Training Course?
I wasn’t sure about taking the course at first,” Michael says. “I thought I already knew how to do threat modeling. But then I watched the teacher analyze a complex system and find security risks I had missed. They showed us a step-by-step way to find problems that we could use over and over.
Michael adds that learning threat modeling was worth the cost. Stopping just one serious security concern from reaching the live system, paid for the training. But the bigger benefit was that it helped everyone start thinking about security early, finding and addressing issues before they became real issues.
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