Have you ever been asked 'what is the best way to protect against $ATTACK'? (usually shortly after $ATTACK makes headlines). Have you ever been challenged to provide the reasoning behind your suggestion? If you were in a room full of experts, would your reasoning hold up under scrutiny? When you discuss with your security-savvy peers, you're quickly come to a consensus on the 'best' control (!= device) to protect against $ATTACK. But do you know WHY it's the 'best'? The Target-Based Security Model is essentially a framework that breaks down attacks to their component level. This breakdown makes it easy to see what the 'best' security controls are - as well as alternative security controls that could also be applied. Its not so much something new, as it is a new way for the industry to communicate about security. In much the same way that the OSI model allows for developers to know they are talking about the same thing, a common security model allows security professionsals to communicate in a vendor-agnostic manner. Think of it as a translation tool for vendor-speak. In this talk we'll present the Target-Based Security model and discuss the following: how it came to be, what it is, and how to use it. And of course, we'll talk about how it can be used to make the world a better place - provided we all agree to use it.