Find the design flaws in a critical application before attackers do

A penetration test attacks a running system to find exploitable flaws. An architecture review examines the design: how data flows, where trust boundaries sit, and which control is meant to stop each threat. It finds problems a tester may never reach, such as missing authorisation between internal services, and it can happen before the system is built. The two work best together.

Yes, and that is often the cheapest time. With architecture diagrams, data flows and API (application programming interface) specifications, I can build a threat model and flag design choices that would be expensive to change later, such as where authorisation is enforced or how partners authenticate. A short check before go-live then confirms the design was built as agreed.

Threat modelling is a structured way of asking what can go wrong with a system before an attacker shows you. You draw how data moves, mark where trust changes, list threats at each boundary with a method such as STRIDE (spoofing, tampering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service, elevation of privilege), and decide which control handles each one.

One critical application or platform, traced end to end. A platform can include a web front end, a mobile app, APIs (application programming interfaces) and the services behind them, as long as they share one architecture. Reviewing several unrelated systems at once spreads the effort too thin to find design flaws, so I do one properly and reuse the method for the next.

Usually your own engineers or the vendor that built the application, because design fixes belong in code and configuration they own. I rank each fix by risk removed and effort so it can go into normal sprint planning. If you need extra hands, delivery is scoped case by case with a partner of your choice or Innov8’s application security unit, which I head and always disclose.