Execution Mode

Threat Modeling is an activity concerning many roles, including:

• Security Experts, who provide a leading guidance for less expert roles.
• Architects and other roles who need to perform a Threat Model, but are not Security Experts.
• Project Managers, Product Managers and other similar roles, who are not specifically interested with technicalities, but need assurance that the Threat Model is actionable and actioned.
• Business Decision Makers, who need to understand the risks and make decision about the various options.

Threats Manager Platform supports those different needs through the concept of Execution Mode: this is a way to determine the behavior of the tool by hiding features and changing their behavior depending on the Execution Mode.

Five different Execution Modes are supported, as of today:

• Pioneer, providing the most complete experience, including very advanced features.
• Expert, designed for those who need not only to create Threat Models, but also to build Templates and guidance.
• Simplified, focused on the core Threat Modeling experience, hiding advanced features like Templates creation.
• Management, which does not provide the Threat Modeling experience and focuses on Integration and Risk Management.
• Business, which provides a focused experience on Risk and Risk Management.

Typically, all the features provided by one of the simpler modes are included in more complex modes. For example, the Expert mode provides all the features of the Simplified mode, but various features of the first are missing from the latter. The intent is to provide a more focused environment, removing more advanced features, if not required. The Execution Mode also changes the behavior of the visible features: not only some Modes cause the interface to become read-only for some features (Management, Business), but it may enable some specific behaviors like Risk Acceptance forms.

It is possible to change the Execution Mode from the Options dialog at any time. To do so, you need to open the File menu and then click on the Options button. this will open the following interface

At the bottom of the Extensions page, you can find the Execution Mode combo box, which allows you to select your preferred mode. When you are satisfied, just click the OK button to close the Options dialog and then restart Threats Manager Studio.

Please refer to page Extensions Configuration for more information about the Extensions page in the Options dialog.