Threat modeling is a structured security practice that identifies potential threats, understands attacker exploitation methods, and designs mitigations before incidents occur. In DevOps environments, this process is continuous, integrated into CI/CD pipelines, and shared across development, operations, and security teams, forming the core of DevSecOps.

Security mistakes discovered late in fast-moving DevOps cycles are expensive to fix and dangerous in production. Effective threat modeling reduces the blast radius of failures, catches design flaws early, and aligns teams to shift security left. This transforms security from a final gate into a continuous design constraint.

Teams apply threat modeling during architecture design, feature planning, and infrastructure changes. Using frameworks like STRIDE (Spoofing, Tampering, Repudiation, Information Disclosure, Denial of Service, Elevation of Privilege), they prioritize threats based on likelihood and impact, integrating outputs into security backlogs and automated CI/CD gates.