Cyberkit field guide · 10 chapters
Understand every line in the picture.
Practical explanations of bowtie analysis for cybersecurity—from the first threat path to maturity, architecture and quantitative loss.
Foundations
Read the diagram and understand how frequency, effectiveness and maturity become risk.
Foundations
Reading a bowtie
What the diagram shows, how to follow one cyber-risk path, and what to question when a layer looks too reassuring.
Read guideFoundations
How the risk numbers work
A practical explanation of LOPA-style path likelihood, barrier effectiveness, impact and the limits of numerical precision.
Read guideFoundations
Maturity: the honest half of effectiveness
Why a technically strong measure can remain a weak barrier until process, ownership, evidence and testing make it dependable.
Read guideModelling practice
Model independent capabilities, place them on the right side and handle persistent weaknesses.
Modelling practice
Barriers are capabilities, not framework controls
How to translate catalogues and clauses into independent capabilities without filling the bowtie with duplicate control labels.
Read guideModelling practice
Bowtie side versus defensive function
Why Prevent, Detect, Respond and Recover do not determine whether a barrier belongs before or after the top event.
Read guideModelling practice
Escalation factors (vulnerabilities)
When a weakness belongs beneath a barrier, how it changes effectiveness, and why most short-lived findings should stay elsewhere.
Read guideArchitecture and scale
Scope systems with zones and conduits, then connect risk paths across the portfolio.
Architecture and scale
Zones, conduits and the Purdue model
Use a simple reference architecture to scope supporting assets and interfaces without turning the risk model into a network inventory.
Read guideArchitecture and scale
Chained bowties and the portfolio
Connect consequences to downstream threats so improvements in one system reveal their effect across the wider attack path.
Read guideInterpretation
Understand the model defaults and extend qualitative risk into calibrated financial estimates.
Interpretation
Assumptions the tool makes
Defaults, conservative choices and modelling shortcuts that must remain visible before anyone treats the output as a decision.
Read guideInterpretation
Quantitative risk (FAIR-informed)
Extend path frequency into expected annual loss and loss-exceedance views without pretending uncertain estimates are accounting facts.
Read guide