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What Are Red Team Exercises?

Red Team exercises are advanced, multi-layered simulated attacks designed to test an organization's security controls, detection capabilities, and incident response procedures against real-world threats. Unlike traditional penetration testing, Red Team exercises are more comprehensive, stealthy, and goal-oriented.

Our Red Team operates like sophisticated threat actors, employing a combination of technical exploits, social engineering, physical security testing, and other tactics to achieve specific objectives—such as accessing sensitive data, compromising critical systems, or establishing persistent access—while evading detection.

These exercises provide invaluable insights into your organization's security posture by revealing how your defensive measures (your "Blue Team") perform against realistic attack scenarios, helping you identify and address gaps in your security before real adversaries can exploit them.

Red Team Exercise Illustration

Benefits of Red Team Exercises

Discover how our Red Team exercises can strengthen your organization's security posture.

Realistic Threat Simulation

Experience attacks that mirror the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by real-world threat actors targeting your industry, providing a more accurate assessment of your security posture.

Validate Detection Capabilities

Test your security monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes to ensure they can effectively detect and respond to sophisticated attacks before significant damage occurs.

Identify Attack Paths

Discover the most likely paths attackers would take to compromise your critical assets, allowing you to prioritize security investments and remediation efforts more effectively.

Train Your Blue Team

Provide your security operations team with valuable hands-on experience detecting and responding to sophisticated attacks, improving their skills and readiness for real incidents.

Demonstrate Real Risk

Provide tangible evidence of security vulnerabilities and their potential business impact, helping to secure executive buy-in for security initiatives and investments.

Meet Compliance Requirements

Satisfy advanced security testing requirements for various regulatory frameworks and industry standards, demonstrating due diligence in protecting sensitive data and systems.

Our Red Team Methodology

A structured approach to simulating real-world attacks against your organization.

1

Reconnaissance & Planning

We begin by gathering intelligence about your organization, identifying potential targets, and developing a comprehensive attack strategy based on your specific objectives and constraints. This phase includes passive reconnaissance, OSINT gathering, and target identification.

2

Initial Access

Our team attempts to gain a foothold in your environment using various techniques, such as phishing campaigns, exploiting external vulnerabilities, social engineering, or physical security breaches. We employ stealthy tactics to avoid detection, just as real attackers would.

3

Persistence & Lateral Movement

Once inside, we establish persistence mechanisms to maintain access and begin moving laterally through your network, escalating privileges, and compromising additional systems while evading detection. We document all potential attack paths and security control bypasses.

4

Objective Completion

We work to achieve the predefined objectives, such as accessing sensitive data, compromising specific systems, or demonstrating the potential for business impact. All activities are conducted within the agreed-upon scope and with appropriate safeguards to prevent actual damage.

5

Analysis & Reporting

We provide comprehensive documentation of our activities, findings, and recommendations. This includes a detailed technical report, an executive summary, and a debrief session to discuss the results and next steps for improving your security posture.

6

Purple Team Collaboration

We work with your security team to review the findings, discuss detection opportunities, and develop remediation strategies. This collaborative approach ensures knowledge transfer and helps your team better understand how to detect and respond to similar attacks in the future.

Types of Red Team Assessments

Customized approaches to meet your specific security testing needs.

Full-Scope Red Team

A comprehensive assessment that tests your organization's security across all vectors, including technical, physical, and human elements.

  • Multi-vector attack simulation
  • Physical security testing
  • Social engineering campaigns
  • Wireless network assessment
  • Endpoint security evaluation
  • Blue team detection assessment

Targeted Red Team

Focused assessment targeting specific critical assets, systems, or data within your organization.

  • Crown jewel targeting
  • Custom attack scenarios
  • Specific objective-based testing
  • Tailored to business risks
  • Concentrated attack vectors
  • Reduced scope, deeper testing

Adversary Emulation

Simulation of specific threat actors known to target your industry, using their documented tactics, techniques, and procedures.

  • Threat actor profiling
  • Industry-specific TTPs
  • MITRE ATT&CK framework alignment
  • APT group simulation
  • Realistic attack chains
  • Detection capability validation

Red Team in Action

A real-world example of how our Red Team exercises uncover critical security gaps.

Financial Services Provider Red Team Exercise

A leading financial services provider engaged our Red Team to assess their security posture and test their detection and response capabilities. The objective was to gain access to their core banking systems and exfiltrate sensitive customer data without being detected.

Key Findings:

  • Exploited an unpatched vulnerability in a public-facing web application to gain initial access
  • Moved laterally through the network by leveraging weak internal network segmentation
  • Escalated privileges by exploiting misconfigured service accounts with excessive permissions
  • Remained undetected for 2 weeks despite active security monitoring

The exercise revealed critical gaps in the organization's security controls, detection capabilities, and incident response procedures. Our team provided detailed recommendations for addressing these issues, including improvements to their phishing defenses, vulnerability management program, network segmentation, privilege management, and security monitoring.

Following the implementation of our recommendations, a follow-up assessment six months later showed significant improvements in the organization's security posture, with our Red Team being detected and contained within hours of initial access.

Why Choose Our Red Team

What sets our Red Team services apart from other security testing providers.

Expert Red Team Operators

Our Red Team consists of highly skilled security professionals with backgrounds in offensive security, threat intelligence, and incident response. Many team members hold advanced certifications such as OSCP, OSEP, CRTP, and have experience in offensive security roles.

This diverse expertise allows us to simulate sophisticated attacks while providing practical, actionable recommendations for improving your security posture.

Realistic Attack Simulation

We don't just run automated tools or follow a standard checklist. Our Red Team develops custom attack scenarios based on your specific threat landscape, industry, and business objectives.

We leverage the latest threat intelligence and emulate the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by real-world threat actors targeting your industry, providing a more accurate assessment of your security posture.

Collaborative Approach

We believe in the value of collaboration between Red and Blue teams. Our engagements include knowledge transfer sessions and purple team exercises to help your security team understand how attacks were executed and how they can better detect and respond to similar threats.

This collaborative approach ensures that your team gains valuable insights and skills that extend beyond the scope of the assessment.

Comprehensive Reporting

Our reports go beyond simply listing vulnerabilities. We provide detailed attack narratives, MITRE ATT&CK mappings, and clear, actionable recommendations prioritized by risk and implementation effort.

We also offer executive-level reporting that translates technical findings into business risks, helping you communicate the value of security investments to stakeholders across your organization.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about our Red Team exercises and services.

What's the difference between a Red Team exercise and a penetration test?

While both Red Team exercises and penetration tests aim to identify security vulnerabilities, they differ significantly in scope, approach, and objectives:

  • Scope: Penetration tests typically focus on specific systems or applications, while Red Team exercises assess your entire security posture across technical, physical, and human elements.
  • Approach: Penetration tests are often conducted with some level of prior knowledge and cooperation from your IT team, while Red Team exercises are stealthy and conducted without the knowledge of most staff to test real-world detection and response capabilities.
  • Objectives: Penetration tests aim to identify as many vulnerabilities as possible within a defined scope, while Red Team exercises focus on achieving specific objectives (such as accessing sensitive data) using the path of least resistance, similar to how real attackers operate.
  • Duration: Penetration tests typically last 1-2 weeks, while Red Team exercises often extend over several weeks or months to allow for more realistic, low-and-slow attack techniques.

Both types of assessments are valuable and often complementary, with penetration testing providing breadth of coverage and Red Team exercises providing depth and realism.

How do you ensure Red Team exercises don't disrupt our operations?

We take several precautions to minimize the risk of disruption during Red Team exercises:

  • Establishing clear rules of engagement and defining "off-limits" systems or activities before the engagement begins
  • Maintaining constant communication with a designated point of contact who can immediately halt any activities if concerns arise
  • Conducting thorough reconnaissance and planning to understand your environment before executing potentially impactful techniques
  • Using non-destructive testing methods whenever possible
  • Scheduling certain activities during off-hours or maintenance windows when appropriate
  • Implementing safeguards to prevent accidental data loss or system outages

Our experienced Red Team operators understand the balance between realistic testing and operational safety, and will always prioritize the stability of your environment.

How often should we conduct Red Team exercises?

The frequency of Red Team exercises depends on several factors, including your organization's size, industry, threat landscape, regulatory requirements, and rate of change in your IT environment. However, as a general guideline:

  • Organizations with mature security programs typically conduct comprehensive Red Team exercises annually
  • High-risk industries (financial services, transportation, critical infrastructure) may benefit from more frequent exercises, potentially semi-annually
  • Following significant changes to your infrastructure, security controls, or business operations, a targeted Red Team exercise may be warranted
  • Some organizations implement continuous Red Team operations, where different aspects of the environment are tested throughout the year

We can help you develop a testing schedule that aligns with your specific security needs, risk tolerance, and budget constraints.

What preparation is required before a Red Team exercise?

To ensure a successful and valuable Red Team exercise, we recommend the following preparations:

  • Clearly define the objectives and scope of the exercise
  • Identify a small team of trusted individuals who will be aware of the exercise (typically limited to senior security leadership)
  • Establish emergency contacts and escalation procedures
  • Define rules of engagement, including any systems or techniques that should be excluded
  • Ensure legal considerations are addressed, including proper authorization and documentation
  • Prepare your incident response team (without revealing the specific timing or nature of the exercise)
  • Consider the timing of the exercise to avoid conflicts with critical business operations or other security initiatives

Our team will guide you through this preparation process to ensure the exercise is conducted safely, legally, and with maximum value to your organization.

How do you measure the success of a Red Team exercise?

The success of a Red Team exercise is measured against its objectives, which typically include:

  • Objective Achievement: Whether the Red Team was able to accomplish the defined mission objectives (e.g., accessing sensitive data, compromising specific systems)
  • Detection Effectiveness: How quickly and effectively your security team detected the Red Team's activities
  • Response Effectiveness: The quality and timeliness of your incident response procedures once activities were detected
  • Findings Quality: The significance and actionability of the vulnerabilities and security gaps identified
  • Knowledge Transfer: The insights gained by your security team and their improved understanding of attack techniques and detection opportunities

It's important to note that a "successful" Red Team breach doesn't indicate failure on your part—it provides valuable insights into how real attackers might target your organization and helps you prioritize security improvements. The true measure of success is how your security posture improves following the exercise.

Ready to Test Your Security Defenses?

Contact our team today to discuss how our Red Team exercises can help you identify and address security vulnerabilities before real attackers can exploit them.