Red Teaming and why it may be right for you?

Red Teams emulate malicious attackers, utilizing similar tactics, techniques, and procedures known as  (TTPs) to attempt at breaching an organization's security system. Sounds intriguing, right? It doesn’t stop there; blue and Purple Teams also exist.  

Here we discuss the whys, what's and differences between all the colors of the rainbow.

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Radar Red:  

Red Teaming is different from traditional security testing (e.g. Penetration Testing, Vulnerability Assessments),  which often focus more on known technical vulnerabilities, and not always process-related issues nor the chaining of patch/configuration-related issues together.  Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Assessments are effective for assessing the effectiveness/efficiency of some security controls/processes but Red Teaming takes this to a new level through different targeting and better emulation of attacker TTPs. As with these assessment methods, Red Teaming is still  performed with the client’s permission and knowledge, though the focus can be more on explotiation of organizational services, processes, practices and responses.  At TENUMBRA, we firmly believe in customized explotiation strategies to tailor the assessment to a client’s specific needs so our emulation activities and results provide better fedility and value.

The ultimate goal of Red Teaming, or sometimes referred to as Offensive Operations, is not only discovering vulnerabilities, but assessing the organization's overall security effectiveness/efficiency, including it’s abilities to detect and respond to attacks and furthermore, recovering if an attack was endured.  

The Red Team works with the organization to define the scope/targets/approach for\the assessment. This can include specific processes, applications systems, networks, and attack scenarios. They do this through preliminary scoping discussions with the client, but once started, by alsogathering information about the target company from Open Source (i.e. OSINT), emulating how a real attacker would gather intelligence on their target. It would then launch the simulated attacks, using a variety of techniques such as Social Engineering, Phishing, as well as exploiting vulnerabilities and processes/practices specific to the organization  

This proactive approach helps an to organization to understand their security posture, improve their defenses, and magnify their detection and ability to counter real-life attacks. To achieve the latter goal, the activities of the Red Team can be held back from the organization’s Blue Team so as to test their playbooks and response capabilties.

At the end, the Red Team provides the client with a detailed, conclusive report of the findings as well as recommendations to prevent a real-world attack and improve the organization defender playbooks and responses.

In summary, here are a few points to consider,

• Comprehensive Assessment:

Red Team assessments evaluate technical security controls and overall security culture, the people, and processes.

• Real-World Likeness:

Real-world attack scenarios are mimicked as closely as can be to give realistic insights.  

• Highlights Impact:

This type of hacking focuses on the impact of successful attacks on the organization's overall business operations and their intentions.  

• Actionable Intelligence:

The findings of a Red Team exercise provide valuable insights and actionable intelligence to solidify security posture.  

The Why?  

Red Team operations permit organizations to proactively expose; to understand and fix security risks and their responses to them so threat actors cannot exploit them.  

Red Teams adopt an adversarial lens, which can aid them to identify the security vulnerabilities in systems/networks/processes and people that real-life attackers are most likely to exploit.  

There are many positive outcomes for a company to consider utilizing Red Teaming for their benefit.

1. Proactive Security:

Red Teaming allows organizations to identify and address potential threats before they can be exploited by malicious actors.

2. Improved Security Posture:

It helps organizations strengthen their defenses by identifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities,  

3. Detection and Response:

This type of service helps organizations to improve their ability to detect and respond to real-world attacks.

4. Risk Reduction:

Organizations can help reduce their overall risk of cyberattacks by gaining insight and knowledge about their security posture and implementing steps to improve and secure it.

5. Improved Security Culture:

This type of teaming can foster a more proactive and security-conscious culture within an organization.  

as well as how all of these aspects of organizational security are he different and how they work together.

Now that we have a background of Red Teaming, we can explore the concepts of Blue Teams and Purple Teaming and their place in the cyber security universe.  

Cool Blue:  

Blue Teams are typically made up of cyber professionals who are focused on defending an organization's systems like information, networks, and infrastructure against cyber threats.  

They are the defenders who implement proactive security measures, surveil for and respond to attacks, and enhance the overall security posture of an organization. To put it frankly, in a Red Team operation (i.e. a Red vs. Blue Team Operation), they oversee the security posture against the group of mock attackers.

They conduct and monitor security controls, keep an eye out for alerts, and ensure policies are enforced. If or when a threat arises, they proceed to investigate, contain, and demolish them.

Fundamentally, they are known as the "good guys" who protect against the "bad guys" simulated by the Red Team

Blue equals good, Red equals bad.  

Peaceful Purple:  

Purple Teaming works to enhance cybersecurity by facilitating collaboration and information sharing between the Red (Offensive) and Blue (Defensive) Teams, the middle of the road, so to speak. Purple Team exercises take the form of “collaborative efforts between offensive security teams (who disguise themselves as attackers) and defenders” so as to work together to improve the organization’s posture and responses.  

Defenders can validate defenses, identify control gaps, learn the weaknesses, and assimilate how adversaries adapt as it happens in real time with cooperation from the Red Team members.

They work in harmony through this process:

• Red and blue Team collaboration to identify vulnerabilities and attack vectors further prioritizing risks

• Red and blue Teams their respective attack-and-defend functions to create a concrete security posture

• Purple Team implement their validation to ensure the effectiveness of remediation against Red Team "attack"

• Remediation efforts to create patches, seal off exploitable vectors, and implement new network security controls

• Iteration and continual adjustments upon combined processes turning to attack, defend, mitigate, and remediate

Conclusion  

Companies should highly  consider using Red vs.Blue, and Purple Teaming to proactively identify and mitigate attacks and vulnerabilities, further strengthen defenses, and improve overall security posture.  

Red Teams simulate the attacks, while the Blue Teams defend, and finally, a Purple Team model/approach  facilitates collaboration, generating a comprehensive ideal to security and leaves you always one step ahead of malicious threat attackers.

Red Team Operations offer the opportunity to throw thebehavior of a real-world adversary against an organization in a positive and collaboration wayto help companies maintain up to date security systems, sometimes achieve regulartory compliance and to proactively prevent attacks before they happen. They are an incredibly important tool, that should be actively utilized on a regular basis.

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