Red Team vs Blue Team

What we call the Red Team, or the red team, consists of teams that use complex attack techniques to identify potential weaknesses in an organisation’s cyber defences and attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities. They look for system vulnerabilities by behaving like real cyber attackers. Red Team teams that act like attackers typically consist of highly experienced security professionals or independent ethical hackers focused on penetration testing, mimicking real-world attack techniques and methods.

Red Team teams typically gain initial access through the theft of user credentials or social engineering techniques. Once inside the network, the red team escalates privileges and moves laterally between systems in order to penetrate the network as deeply as possible, exfiltrating data while evading detection.

Why Should We Form a Red Team?

The purpose of forming a Red Team is to systematically and rigorously identify an attack path that breaches the organisation’s security defences through real-world attack techniques. In adopting this adversarial approach, the organisation’s defence is based on the actual performance of security tools and systems against real-world threats, rather than on their theoretical capabilities. Forming a Red Team has become a critical component in accurately assessing a company’s prevention, detection, and remediation capabilities and maturity.

Why Should We Form a Blue Team?

While Red Team teams conduct attack simulations, Blue Team teams respond by carrying out defence. Typically, this group demonstrates its incident response experience by guiding the IT security team on where improvements should be made to stop complex types of cyber attacks and threats.

Although many organisations view attack prevention as an important security standard, detection and remediation are equally important for overall defensive capabilities. One of the key metrics is the point in the organisation known as the “breakout time“. Developing critical defensive systems between when an intruder compromises the first machine and when they can move laterally to other systems in the network is vitally important.

How Do Red Team and Blue Team Work Together?

Red Team and Blue Team exercises are critically important steps of a robust and effective security strategy. Ideally, they help identify weaknesses in the employees, processes, and technologies within the organisation’s network perimeter, and detect vulnerabilities such as backdoors and other access points that may exist in the security architecture. This information will ultimately help strengthen the organisation’s defence and give security teams the experience needed to respond better to threats.

Many cybersecurity breaches may go undetected for days or even months. At this point it is important to regularly conduct red team and blue team exercises within the organisation. You can of course also review the PriviaHub Training, Simulation and Exercise Platform, which offers tailored solutions for your organisation. PriviaHub offers your organisation a dedicated interview and cyber warfare environment for blue team and red team members.

Cyber attackers continuously evolve their attack TTPs every day, which can cause breaches to go unnoticed for weeks or months. At the same time, organisations fail to detect complex attacks due to ineffective security controls and gaps in cyber security defences. We need to make sure security teams are ready for a targeted attack. The ability to withstand a cyber attack does not mean the team has the tools and visibility to withstand a more complex attack.

Research shows that cyber attackers remain undetected in a network environment for an average of 197 days before being discovered and exposed.