What is red teaming?

Cybersecurity is a battleground, and as the digital landscape evolves, so do the tactics of malicious actors. One strategy to fortify your defences and identify vulnerabilities is the practice of red teaming.

Red teaming is vital for organisations as it realistically simulates cyber threats, offering a full evaluation of security across technology, human resources, and infrastructure. It identifies weaknesses, tests incident response, and prepares for advanced attacks, enabling ongoing improvement and learning between internal defenders and simulated adversaries. The insights gained support strategic decision-making, ensuring organisations stay resilient against evolving cyber threats.

In this article, we'll explore red teaming, its benefits, the steps involved, and continuous automated red teaming.

What is a red team?

In cybersecurity, a red team is not just a group of experts; it strategically mimics the tactics of real cyber adversaries to assess an organisation's resilience. Originating from military simulations, red teaming has become crucial for organisations defending against various cyber threats. Consisting of highly skilled cybersecurity professionals, the red team operates independently, often hired externally for an unbiased evaluation.

The red team's primary goal is to authentically simulate real-world cyber threats. It employs diverse tactics, mirroring malicious actors' methodologies, from social engineering and phishing to exploiting technology vulnerabilities and probing physical security. Unlike penetration testing, red team exercises are conducted without warning to the internal security team, ensuring a genuine measure of the organisation's ability to respond to a surprise cyber-attack.

At its core, a red team serves as a simulated adversarial force, relentlessly testing an organisation's security posture. By adopting external threat actors' mindset, the red team provides invaluable insights into identifying vulnerabilities and evaluating an organisation's response capabilities.

Benefits of red teaming

Why subject your organisation to red team testing? The benefits are many. This approach offers a comprehensive assessment of your cybersecurity, providing insights into vulnerabilities across various domains. Red teaming goes beyond technology, scrutinising human resources and infrastructure vulnerabilities, and preparing your defense team for real-world scenarios.

• Holistic security assessment: It provides a comprehensive evaluation of cybersecurity by simulating real-world threats, including social engineering and physical security, offering a realistic view of vulnerabilities.
• Identification of vulnerabilities: It uncovers both technical and non-technical vulnerabilities, offering organisations insights into weaknesses in technology, human resources, and infrastructure.
• Testing incident response: Red team testing evaluates incident response procedures, challenging the internal security team (blue team) to detect and respond to simulated cyber threats, identifying and improving response capabilities.
• Realistic threat scenarios: It emulates advanced persistent threats (APTs), providing a realistic threat scenario that enhances organisations' understanding of their security posture against sophisticated cyber attacks.

How does a red team work?

Red teaming involves a strategic and methodical approach to simulate real-world cyber threats. The process typically follows a chain of stages, including initial access, persistence, privilege escalation, command and control, objective attainment, and data exfiltration. Drawing inspiration from threat intelligence reports or current trends, the red team emulates specific threat actors, adapting their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to the organisation's context.

During an engagement, the red team operates to access predetermined targets, such as sensitive data or critical systems. This involves employing various tactics, including social engineering, application penetration testing, network sniffing, and physical security testing. The blue team, unaware of the ongoing simulation, is tasked with defending the organisation against these simulated attacks. This dynamic interaction allows both teams to learn from each other, with the red team revealing vulnerabilities and the blue team honing its detection and response capabilities. The ultimate goal is to provide organisations with actionable insights into their cybersecurity posture and enhance their ability to thwart sophisticated cyber threats.