The security of organizations is being exposed more frequently than ever, as cyberattacks are not only becoming more numerous, but also more sophisticated and harder to detect. This development highlights the vulnerabilities of many companies, a problem that we must put on the table and address seriously, since data leakage not only compromises our privacy, but also exposes us directly to future social engineering attacks and scams.
To visualize the seriousness of this situation, just look at the data provided by the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, which indicates that the average time to carry out a ransomware attack has decreased by 94% in recent years, from 68 days in 2019 to less than four days in 2023. This reality underscores the importance of organizations not only identifying technical flaws, but also assessing their operational readiness and responsiveness in real attack scenarios.
To deal with these sorts of attacks, organizations need strategies that allow them to realistically assess their defense capabilities. These threats reinforce the importance of continuously assessing the security of systems and adopting strategic and proactive approaches such as red teaming, which allows real attacks to be simulated to detect and correct vulnerabilities before they are exploited by cybercriminals.
What is red teaming?
Red teaming is a security evaluation process in which ethical hackers conduct a simulated, non-destructive cyber attack in order to identify vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems, processes and staff. Unlike a conventional penetration test, which focuses on detecting specific flaws, red teaming takes a more strategic and realistic view, replicating tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) used by advanced threat actors, as its goal is not only to find vulnerabilities, but also to measure the organization’s detection and response capabilities.
Therefore, a key aspect of this approach is the simulation of real threats without prior warning, ranging from social engineering techniques to physical attacks and the exploitation of technical weaknesses, to provide a comprehensive view of potential attack vectors. In this way, red teaming helps to increase cybersecurity awareness by exposing employees and managers to realistic attack scenarios, strengthening their response capabilities and minimizing the risks associated with human failure.
Link between red teaming and blue teaming
Within cybersecurity, teams are often divided into “red team” and “blue team” and although the term red teaming has become popular because of the need for organizations to take a proactive role in assessing their security, it is not enough to create an attack scenario, so blue teaming is always present, as companies must have defensive strategies in place to mitigate the risks that red team identifies.
Therefore, red teaming would be meaningless without blue teaming, as its purpose is to evaluate an organization’s defense capability. If there were no defense team, there would be nothing to test or improve. In a similar way, blue teaming benefits from red teaming because simulated attacks allow it to identify weaknesses and improve its defensive strategies.
In fact, many organizations have adopted the concept of “purple teaming”, where the red team and blue team work together to optimize security, ensuring that offensive findings translate into effective defensive improvements.
Red teaming techniques
Red teaming uses advanced techniques to assess an organization’s security, replicating methods used by real attackers. Among its key strategies is social engineering, with tactics such as phishing, vishing and smishing to obtain credentials or unauthorized access. It also performs physical security testing, analyzing surveillance systems, alarms and access controls, as well as application penetration testing, focusing on vulnerabilities such as SQL injections or authentication failures.
In addition, the red team conducts network spying, monitoring traffic for misconfigurations or exposed credentials, and employs brute-force attacks to gain access to systems using lists of common or leaked passwords.
Therefore, to test the resilience of an infrastructure against cyber-attacks, the red team runs simulations targeting a variety of critical points, including artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, databases, workstations, mobile devices, cryptographic systems, detection and response solutions (EDR/XDR), firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS) and security automation and response (SOAR) platforms.
This holistic approach makes it possible to identify vulnerabilities at multiple levels and strengthen the security posture before malicious actors can exploit them.
Stages of a red teaming evaluation
Red teaming exercises follow a structured approach in several phases:
- Reconnaissance: Information about the organization is gathered using open sources (OSINT), social engineering and advanced techniques.
- Access development: Vulnerabilities are exploited to gain initial access to target systems.
- Privilege escalation: Ways are sought to gain greater permissions within the compromised infrastructure.
- Lateral movement: Techniques are deployed to move within the network and gain access to critical assets.
- Persistence and exfiltration: Methods are established to maintain access and extract sensitive data without detection.
- Reporting and recommendations: Findings are documented and mitigation strategies are presented to the security team.
Continuous Automated Network Teaming (CART)
One of the biggest challenges of traditional red teaming is that security audits are usually performed at periodic intervals, leaving windows of time in which the organization may be exposed to new threats. During these periods, critical vulnerabilities, infrastructure changes or more sophisticated attack techniques may emerge that go undetected until the next assessment.
To address this limitation, Continuous Automated Network Teaming (CART) solutions have emerged, a methodology that leverages automation to run security tests in an uninterrupted manner. These tools enable real-time asset discovery, which helps to maintain an up-to-date inventory of systems and detect any unexpected changes that may represent a vulnerability. They also facilitate the prioritization of vulnerabilities through automated scans that identify and categorize risks based on their criticality and exploitability.
Another key aspect of CART is its ability to simulate attacks on a continuous basis, using up-to-date tools and exploits that replicate the tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) employed by malicious actors in the real world. This provides a dynamic, real-time view of the organization’s security posture, enabling immediate adjustments and improvements to defense strategies.
By adopting a constant, automated evaluation approach, CART significantly improves responsiveness to evolving threats. Instead of relying on sporadic audits, organizations can proactively detect, analyze and mitigate risks, reducing their exposure and strengthening their security against emerging attacks.
Penetration testing vs Red teaming
Although penetration testing and red teaming share similarities and complement each other within an effective security strategy, their approaches are different:
| Red teaming | Pentesting | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Holistic (infrastructure, processes, and people) | Technical (applications and systems) |
| Goal | Assess resilience against real attacks | Identify technical vulnerabilities |
| Duration | Weeks or months | Days or weeks |
| Interaction | Stealthy, the blue team is unaware of the attack | Usually coordinated with the security team |
Conclusion
The evolution of cyber threats has highlighted the need for organizations to adopt strategic and proactive approaches to protect their systems, data and staff. In this context, red teaming has established itself as an essential approach to realistically assess security, enabling companies to detect vulnerabilities and strengthen their attack response capabilities.
However, red teaming is not a stand-alone solution, as its effectiveness depends on interaction with blue teaming, giving rise to collaborative approaches such as purple teaming. In addition, the adoption of CART represents an important advance, since it allows security to be assessed constantly and in real time, reducing the window of exposure to new threats.
In short, cybersecurity must be understood as a dynamic process in which detection, response and continuous improvement are essential. Only through a combination of well-integrated offensive and defensive strategies will organizations be able to anticipate attacks and strengthen their security posture in a constantly evolving digital environment.
Resources:
[1] Wikipedia – Red Team
[2] IBM – What is red teaming?
[3] Microsoft Learn – Planning red teaming for large language models (LLMs) and their applications
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