Secure by Design

Secure by design is the mandate. Making it real is the work.

Everyone agrees security should be designed in, not added later. The hard part is doing it consistently, at scale, in a way you can prove. ThreatModeler^® Nexus™ turns the principle into a practice, capturing the intended design and keeping it true as systems change.

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Defining the intended design is the step you can't skip.

From principle to practice

A mandate without a method is just a slide.

Secure by design fails quietly when it depends on the right person being in the right meeting. To hold across hundreds of systems, it has to be captured, repeatable, and current, not reconstructed each time someone asks.

"We've committed to secure by design, but in practice it depends on who's reviewing and how much time they have."

Make the design a model, not a meeting. The System Mapping Agent captures the intended design from architecture artifacts or from the code, so secure design is recorded work rather than a conversation that happened once.

"Designing it in is fine until the system changes and the design quietly drifts away from it."

Keep the intent current. The Secure Design Graph updates as systems change, so the model reflects what is shipping. Defining the intended design doesn't have to come first, but it has to stay true.

"Code scanning tells me what's there. It doesn't tell me what the design was supposed to include and doesn't."

Find what's missing. Because the model is anchored in intended design, ThreatModeler Nexus surfaces the control that should exist, the gap a scan of present code cannot see.

The control plane for secure design

One place where the design intent lives and stays honest.

ThreatModeler Nexus is a threat modeling platform first: it shows what could go wrong in a system so you can design the risk out. The agents do the mechanical work on the Secure Design Graph, so secure design is something you operate, not something you hope happened.

Captured

Intent on the record

The intended design becomes a model, built from artifacts or inferred from code, so secure design is documented and reusable across the portfolio.

Current

True as it changes

The Secure Design Graph keeps the model aligned with the system as it evolves, so design intent and reality don't quietly diverge between reviews.

Provable

Evidence on demand

Versioning, approval workflows, and a full audit trail mean you can show secure design happened, and why each decision was made.

See the Secure Design Graph

CISA Secure by Design Pledge

A commitment to the principle and the practice.

ThreatModeler is a signatory of the CISA Secure by Design Pledge, joining more than 200 technology manufacturers who committed to measurable, customer-protective improvements: expanding MFA, reducing entire classes of vulnerability by default, and providing greater transparency to customers.

CISA defines secure by design as building security into the manufacture of products to provide greater overall security and higher quality outcomes for end customers. ThreatModeler Nexus is the product expression of that principle: threat modeling is how you apply it, and the Secure Design Graph is how you prove it.

See the Secure Design Graph

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Proactive threat identification. The most effective when performed during the build phase: finding what could go wrong before it's in production.

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Reduced vulnerabilities by design. Controls placed during design are structurally cheaper and more effective than patches applied post-incident.

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Demonstrable evidence. A record you can show, not an assertion, a threat model with version history and a full audit trail behind every decision.

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Future-proofed design. Because the Secure Design Graph stays current as systems change, secure design isn't a one-time certification: it's a standing property of how the system is built and maintained.

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500+ prebuilt templates. Standardize secure design across teams from the start, so every new system inherits proven patterns rather than starting from scratch.

See what could go wrong, before it does.

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