Places on a network diagram
Physical locations and regions.
3 objects in this group, each named in plain English with the technical terms kept as searchable aliases. 2 of them carry attack notes, and every one of those ships beside the defences that reduce it. 2 are defined in full below, and the other has an entry of its own.
Site
office · location · branch
A physical place the organisation operates from.
Why it matters on a security diagram
Network boundaries and legal obligations often follow physical sites.
How it gets attacked
- Entry by following staff through a controlled door
What reduces it
- Keep network sockets in public areas inactive until a device proves itself
- Assess an acquired site before joining it to the corporate network, not afterwards
Whose side, by default · Ours. Belongs to the organisation the diagram is about.
Data centre
server room · colocation · comms room
The building or room where the servers physically live.
Region
country · jurisdiction · cloud region
A country or geographic area.
Why it matters on a security diagram
Which laws apply turns on where the organisation operates, whom it serves and where the data sits, and those three answers frequently disagree. Drawing the region makes the disagreement visible.
What reduces it
- Apply the same records, limits and monitoring to every region you have switched on, not only the ones you expected to use
No attack notes, because this is a boundary rather than a system. What gets attacked is the things inside it.
Whose side, by default · Bystander. No relationship with us and no choice in the matter: an unwitting hosting provider, a stranger's compromised machine.
The other groups
- Network6The paths traffic travels along.
- Wireless and radio11The parts of the network that travel through the air, and how far they reach.
- Cloud and subscribed services12Things that only exist because somebody else runs the platform underneath them.
- Security and edge11The things that sit in front of something else and check what is trying to reach it.
- Servers13Machines that run something for other machines.
- Storage4Where data sits still.
- Endpoints and devices8The things people and processes touch directly.
- Identity6Who something claims to be, and what proves it.
- People and organisations4The humans and the entities they belong to.
- Process flow7Shapes for describing a procedure rather than a network.
- Threats15The adversary and the things they bring.
Draw it rather than read it
Every object above is in the editor. Press N, type a few letters of the plain name or the acronym, and it is placed and connected to whatever was selected. Nothing is uploaded, because the page is served with a Content Security Policy that forbids the browser from making any outbound request at all.
Open the diagram makerThe catalogue behind this page is published as open data under CC BY 4.0, last reviewed . Every attack note describes a mechanism and contains no procedure. Corrections are welcome.