Anticipate Threats. Mitigate Risk. Secure Growth.
The Challenge
Most organisations don’t know how they’ll be attacked. Attackers do.
The NCSC estimates that over 40% of UK businesses have been targeted and attacked in the past year. This figure combined with only 57% of UK businesses having a formal cyber security strategy, shows it is clear that many organisations have a knowledge gap around how they might be attacked, when they will be attacked and making sure they have the right security tools, processes and plans in place.
From our experience at Cyberfort when engaging with organisations that have been attacked over the past 12 months, we have discovered the majority had security tools and processes in place. Many had passed penetration tests. But almost none had a structured, adversarial model of how a threat actor would move through their specific environment – which assets they’d target, in which sequence, what the impact could potentially be on their business.
This knowledge gap is not a technology problem. It is a strategic one. And it is the gap that threat actors exploit most reliably.
The situation has fundamentally changed
The threat landscape facing UK organisations today is not an elevated version of what existed five years ago. It is categorically different.
Ransomware groups now operate with the structure and discipline of professional services firms. Nation-state actors are targeting supply chains, not just perimeters. Insider threats are increasing as workforce complexity grows. And regulatory frameworks including NIS2, DORA, the ICO and the upcoming UK Cyber Security and Resilience Bill means Cyber Security and IT leaders need to ensure they have the right information about potential attacks and the right cyber security strategy in place to mitigate the impact of a potential attack.
In this environment, the question is no longer whether your organisation will be targeted. It is whether you will understand how before an adversary demonstrates it for you.
Compliance frameworks tell you what controls to have in place. They do not tell you whether those controls would stop a determined, intelligent adversary targeting your organisation, its data, and your vulnerabilities. That requires something different. It requires threat modelling.
The complication for Cyber Security and IT leaders
Security investment in the UK has grown consistently for a decade. Budgets are larger. Tool stacks have become more sophisticated. Teams are more qualified. Yet successful cyber-attacks keep happening and are growing year on year.
The problem is not effort. It is direction.
Without a structured threat model, security programmes are built on assumptions about which assets matter most, which threat actors are most likely, and which attack paths are most credible. Those assumptions are rarely tested. They are inherited from previous strategies, shaped by vendor recommendations, and validated by compliance checklists that measure the presence of controls, not their effectiveness against real adversaries.
The result is organisations are simultaneously, over-invested in areas that provide limited risk reduction, and under-invested in the specific controls that would stop the attacks most likely to affect them. This is not a failure of intent. It is a failure of information. This gap is precisely what threat modelling resolves.
Why your business needs an independent Threat Model
Threat modelling is the structured, systematic process of identifying how a specific adversary would target a specific organisation, mapping attack paths against assets, processes, and threat actors. A threat model undertaken by cyber security experts produces a prioritised, actionable view of where risk is concentrated and where investment will have the greatest impact.
At Cyberfort our Threat Modelling services are delivered by practitioners who have worked inside red teams, incident response functions, and security architecture programmes. Our threat modelling engagements go beyond frameworks and checklists. We think like the adversary. We map your environment the way an attacker would.
The outcomes organisations can achieve by undertaking a Threat Modelling exercise with Cyberfort include:
- Being able to define your most critical assets and the threat actors most likely to target them (nation-state, ransomware groups, insider threat)
- Have the ability to identify and rank attack paths using established methodologies mapped to your environment
- Defensible compliance evidence for ICO, FCA, DORA or NIS2 audit trails
- Board-ready risk narratives that translate technical exposure into business impact
- Prioritised remediation roadmaps that align security spend to actual threat likelihood
Start with a Threat Landscape review
At Cyberfort we understand many organisations need advice on where to start with a Threat Modelling exercise. We offer a complimentary 30-minute Threat Landscape Review for IT Directors and CISOs who want an independent, honest view of where their organisation sits relative to the current threat environment.
No preparation required. No obligation. A direct conversation between your team and one of our experts about the threat actors targeting your sector, the attack paths most relevant to your architecture, and what a structured threat modelling engagement would look like in your specific environment.
If it is useful, we will talk about next steps. If it is not the right time, you will leave with something valuable regardless. For more information about Cyberfort Threat Modelling services email us at [email protected] and one of our experts will be in touch.
