1. NIST Special Publication 800-64 Rev. 2
Security Considerations in the System Development Life Cycle.
Section 3.3
Design Phase (Page 27): This section explicitly states that the design phase includes activities such as conducting a risk assessment
designing security architecture
and developing security test and evaluation plans. It notes
"The security activities and the resulting security documentation are a product of the design phase."
2. NIST Special Publication 800-218
Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF) Version 1.1.
Section 3
The Practices
DE.1 (Page 15): "Design Software to Mitigate Risks" describes performing threat modeling and designing security architecture during the design phase.
Section 3
The Practices
DE.2 (Page 16): "Review Software Design" details the necessity of reviewing the design and architecture to ensure it complies with security requirements before coding begins.
3. Gary McGraw
Software Security: Building Security In. Addison-Wesley Professional
2006.
Chapter 5
Architectural Risk Analysis (Page 87): The author
a leading expert
places architectural risk analysis (a form of threat modeling) as a critical activity to be performed after the software architecture has been defined
which is central to the design phase.
4. MIT OpenCourseWare
6.858 Computer Systems Security
Fall 2014.
Lecture 19: Web Security
Part II (Threat models): The lecture materials discuss threat modeling techniques like STRIDE as a design-time activity to systematically reason about potential threats to a system's design. This aligns the activity with the SDLC's Design phase. (Available at: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-858-computer-systems-security-fall-2014/pages/lecture-notes/)