Data breaches are growing more expensive by the day. The average cost of a data breach is projected to reach $5 million by the end of 2023, up from $4.35 million in 2022.
Penetration testing, or pen testing, helps you uncover unknown vulnerabilities and compliance gaps within your organization's cybersecurity posture so you can be better prepared in the future against such damaging cyberattacks.
Information security requires teamwork. Many organizations have adopted a red team/blue team approach to adversary attack and defense simulation testing. As defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the red team/blue team approach is:
“A group of people authorized and organized to emulate a potential adversary’s attack or exploitation capabilities against an enterprise’s security posture. The Red Team’s objective is to improve enterprise Information Assurance by demonstrating the impacts of successful attacks and by demonstrating what works for the defenders (i.e., the Blue Team) in an operational environment.”
In 2017, a security expert suggested expanding these teams to include yellow and intersecting red, blue, and yellow teams to create purple, orange, and green teams, as well as a white team.
Red team/blue team penetration testing is a powerful method for putting your defenses to the test. Understanding how it works and the roles involved can help strengthen the information security posture of your organization, enabling you to be more resilient against cyberattacks, social engineering, and phishing.
There are three main roles involved in team penetration testing — red (attacker), blue (defender) and the newly introduced yellow (builder). Exercised simulations utilizing this team approach helps organizations better prepare for the unexpected.
The yellow team prepares your security system by building software solutions, scripts, and other programs your blue team will use in the penetration test. The yellow team is made up of programmers, application developers, software engineers, and software architects. During the test, the red team will attempt to get past your defenses (blue team) using various hacking techniques including:
The blue team uses the yellow team's security programs to defend your system against both red team attackers and legitimate cyber threats.
Another commonly referenced term is the purple team. The purple team is less of a team and more of a process coordination between red and blue teams — it serves to collect lessons learned and maximize the capabilities of the two primary teams in devising comprehensive security solutions for the future. This final step is essential for getting the full picture of what each team discovered during the test.
Each team in a red team/blue team penetration test plays a valuable role in evaluating and strengthening your defenses. Here are how the responsibilities typically break down.
Although red teams are often confused with penetration testers due to their overlapping skill sets, the two are not necessarily the same. A red team is most often tasked with achieving a specific objective (to access target data or systems), while the goal of a penetration tester is usually to uncover as many exploitable vulnerabilities as possible.
Typically, the red team includes specialized outsourced third parties with experience in performing highly targeted penetration testing of various systems. Leveraging this expertise allows organizations to utilize best offensive testing scenarios as part of their penetration testing.
A typical red team exercise follows this process:
This collaborative report will outline specific steps your company can take to improve your cybersecurity posture and ensure compliance with key industry regulations.
The blue team is responsible for defending against both real threats and red teaming in an information security test.
Here is what a test usually looks like for the blue team:
To get the most accurate idea of how your organization would respond to a real cyberattack, keep the blue team unaware of the test. Ideally, the only person who should know is the team's leader, who can help manage the situation if the perceived threat escalates.
Often times, the red team can successfully penetrate the company's protections without the blue team ever realizing it. Without the red team's report, the blue team is unlikely to gain the knowledge they need to improve your security. That is where the purple team comes in.
The purple team is a dynamic team made up of both red and blue team members. This team drives the exercise of findings, learnings, and recommendations accumulation based on insights gained during the testing process.
Purple teaming is critical for a successful red team exercise. In this step, the red team contributes information on the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) they used to gain entry to their system. They will also share which TTPs were successful and which ones failed.
Your blue team then uses that feedback to strengthen your organization's defenses. For example, if the red team executed successful phishing attacks, the blue team could focus on training your staff to recognize and respond to similar phishing attacks in the future.
Sometimes, companies will include additional teams in their tests, such as:
Depending on the makeup of your organization's IT department, your testing strategy may include all the above teams, or it might include merged instances of these teams with shared responsibilities.
Red team/blue team exercises help companies uncover vulnerabilities within their systems, defend against data breaches and ransomware, and ensure compliance with key cybersecurity regulations and standards such as HIPAA, NIST, GLBA, and PCI DSS.
To learn more about how a red team/blue team security assessment could bolster your cybersecurity posture, contact the Compass IT Compliance team. We offer multiple types of penetration testing services, including red team/blue team penetration testing exercises, to provide comprehensive insights into your current cybersecurity posture.
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