Derived from military exercise terminology, a red team exercise simulates a real-life threat to your organisation, targeting all possible elements, including the cyber assets, the personnel that work for your organisation, and the physical assets. This assessment is a simulation of a sophisticated attack against your organisation, where a variety of tactics, techniques, and procedures will be used.
It is a security assessment that enables an organisation to assess its overall readiness and awareness using realistic scenario-based controlled incidents. Red teaming goes above and beyond vulnerability assessments and penetration testing, as it takes all components within the organisation into scope and has a realistic scenario-based approach. Ultimately, red teaming allows organisations to mature their cyber capabilities and kick-start transformation programmes.
Targeting the people, processes, and technology to understand where the security weaknesses lie and how to remain cyber resilient by empowering your blue teams is a key outcome of a successful red team assessment
Red teams will attempt to apply the same tools and strategies that actual attackers use. However, red teamers don’t harm anything, unlike cybercriminals. Instead, they highlight gaps in a company’s security safeguards.
The ability to think laterally and challenge long-standing assumptions
Devising, coordinating, and executing a plan to perfection
Expert-level knowledge of all the latest threats and vulnerabilities
Exploiting innate human vulnerabilities to leverage attacks
Finding weaknesses in physical security systems and defence
Using a cybersecurity arsenal to access confidential systems and data
Using publicly available information to gain an advantage
Consistently guessing passwords, for instance by attempting credentials from breach dumps or lists of frequently used passwords.
Well, an effective red team exercise entails understanding your attack surface, where security weaknesses exist, and what
assets are most enticing to threat actors, as well as developing the ability to detect, all while guaranteeing a quick and effective response
As your organisation changes, new technology and policies must be strategically integrated rather than tactically (and maybe haphazardly) applied, and compliance should be the result of the strategy rather than its sole objective.