Mode is a cloud-based analytics platform that enables organizations to analyze, visualize, and share data from various sources. It provides tools for data exploration, interactive dashboards, SQL-based querying, collaboration, and reporting.

Understanding the presence of Mode throughout an organization's external digital presence is essential for several reasons:

Data Security: Mode stores and processes sensitive business data, including customer information, financial records, and operational metrics. Knowing where Mode is implemented externally helps organizations assess the security of their data by identifying potential exposure points, vulnerabilities, or misconfigurations that could lead to unauthorized access or data breaches.

Regulatory Compliance: Organizations are subject to various data protection regulations and industry standards that govern data collection, processing, and storage. Understanding the presence of Mode helps organizations ensure compliance with regulatory requirements such as GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and others by assessing how data is handled, stored, and secured within Mode instances.

Data Governance: Mode provides features for data governance, including access controls, data classification, audit logs, and version control. Understanding the presence of Mode helps organizations enforce data governance policies, manage user access and permissions, track data access and usage, and demonstrate compliance with internal policies and regulatory requirements.

Collaboration and Reporting: Mode facilitates collaboration among data analysts, business users, and stakeholders by providing tools for sharing insights, creating interactive dashboards, and generating reports. Knowing where Mode is integrated externally helps organizations manage their reporting workflows, assess the security of shared data and reports, and ensure that authorized users access and use data appropriately.

Incident Response and Data Breach Management: In the event of a security incident or data breach involving Mode, organizations need to identify the affected assets quickly, assess the impact of the incident, and implement remediation measures to mitigate the risk. Understanding the presence of Mode throughout an organization's external digital presence helps organizations respond effectively to security incidents, minimize the impact on operations, and protect sensitive data.

Knowing the presence of Mode throughout an organization's external digital presence is essential for ensuring the security and compliance of data analytics and reporting processes, managing third-party risks, enforcing data governance policies, and effectively responding to security incidents or data breaches involving Mode. By maintaining visibility and control over Mode implementations, organizations can safeguard sensitive data, protect against potential threats, and maintain trust and confidence in their data analytics operations.

An all-in-one external attack surface management (EASM), digital risk protection (DRP), and security ratings solution like ThreatNG, capable of discovering possible externally identifiable instances of Mode, offers several benefits to organizations:

Visibility and Discovery: ThreatNG can scan external-facing assets, including web applications, APIs, and DNS records, to identify instances of Mode integration or usage. This helps organizations gain visibility into their external attack surface and understand how Mode is being used across their digital presence.

Risk Assessment: Once Mode instances are discovered, ThreatNG can assess the associated risks by analyzing configuration settings, permissions, and security controls. This helps organizations identify potential misconfigurations or vulnerabilities that could expose sensitive data to security threats.

Compliance Monitoring: ThreatNG helps organizations ensure compliance with data protection regulations and industry standards by assessing the implementation of Mode against relevant security frameworks. This includes evaluating adherence to data privacy regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, and others, and ensuring that appropriate security controls are in place to protect data stored and processed within Mode.

Incident Response: In a security incident or data breach involving Mode, ThreatNG can provide valuable insights into the affected assets, the nature of the attack, and potential indicators of compromise (IOCs). This helps organizations respond quickly and effectively to mitigate the impact of the incident and prevent further exploitation.

Integration with Other Security Solutions: ThreatNG can work synergistically with other complementary security solutions to enhance overall cybersecurity posture. For example:

• Integration with data loss prevention (DLP) solutions: ThreatNG can provide visibility into external instances of Mode, allowing DLP solutions to monitor and control the transfer of sensitive data to and from Mode, enforce data protection policies, and prevent data leakage or unauthorized sharing of sensitive information.

• Integration with cloud access security brokers (CASBs): ThreatNG can feed information about Mode instances into CASB platforms for centralized visibility, policy enforcement, and threat protection across cloud services, including Mode. CASBs can analyze user activity, detect anomalous behavior, and enforce security controls to protect data stored and processed in Mode.

• Integration with vulnerability management platforms: ThreatNG can integrate with vulnerability management platforms to prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities identified in Mode instances, ensuring that misconfigurations or security weaknesses are addressed promptly to reduce the risk of exploitation.

Real-life example:

A financial services organization uses ThreatNG to monitor its external attack surface and digital assets. During a routine scan, ThreatNG identifies several externally accessible web applications and APIs that integrate with Mode for data analytics and reporting. ThreatNG conducts a risk assessment of these Mode instances and discovers misconfigurations that could expose sensitive data to unauthorized access. The organization promptly addresses these issues by implementing stronger security controls, conducting security training for employees, and enhancing monitoring and incident response capabilities to protect against security threats involving Mode. By leveraging ThreatNG and integrating it with other security solutions, the organization strengthens its overall cybersecurity posture and reduces the risk of data breaches or security incidents involving Mode.