Red Team Testing

A red team is a group of ethical hackers and cybersecurity experts who simulate real-world cyberattacks against your organisation. They use the same tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) as actual attackers to uncover vulnerabilities in your people, processes, and technology.

A red team conducts a simulated attack against your organisation, testing your security controls, incident response capabilities, and overall security posture. They may use social engineering, technical hacking, physical security testing, and other known methods used by bad actors to gain access to your systems and data.

A red team exercise is a comprehensive security assessment that mimics a real-world cyberattack. It typically involves multiple stages, including reconnaissance, initial attack, escalation, and lateral movement. The goal is to identify and exploit vulnerabilities before attackers can, so they can be pre-emptively secured.

The duration of a red teaming operation depends on the size and complexity of your organisation, your specific objectives, and the scope of the engagement. Typically, it can range from a few days to several weeks.

Pen testing focuses on identifying technical vulnerabilities within specific systems or networks. Red teaming takes a broader approach, simulating a complete attack cycle and testing your entire security ecosystem, including human factors and incident response capabilities.

Red teams take precautions to avoid causing damage or disruption to your systems and data. They will always communicate with you and get your approval before taking any significant actions. However, some minor disruption might occur during the reconnaissance phase, such as receiving test phishing emails.

Red team testing offers numerous benefits, including:

• Uncovering hidden vulnerabilities - It goes beyond identifying flaws, highlighting weaknesses in your wider cyber security posture.
• Improving security awareness - It highlights human factors and raises awareness of cyber threats among your employees.
• Testing incident response - It assesses the effectiveness of your incident response plan and identifies areas for improvement.
• Hardening your defences - It provides actionable recommendations to close security gaps and boost your cyber security maturity.

Red team testing is offensive, simulating an attack. Blue team testing is defensive, focusing on detecting and defending against attacks. Purple teaming combines the two, encouraging communication and collaboration between red and blue teams for continuous improvement.

Purple teaming is the collaborative effort between red and blue teams to improve an organisation's overall security posture. It brings together offensive and defensive perspectives to gain a holistic view of vulnerabilities and implement more effective security measures.

Red teams typically work in four stages:

• Planning and scoping - They collaborate with you to define the scope and objectives of the engagement.
• Reconnaissance - They gather information about your organisation, systems, and people.
• Attack simulation - They launch simulated attacks using various real-world tactics and techniques.
• Reporting and remediation - They provide a detailed report outlining vulnerabilities and recommendations for remediation.