What is red teaming? How is it different from conventional penetration testing? Why do we need blue, red, and white teams? How are cyber-drills carried out, and what results should be expected? In this article, we will answer these and other questions related to red teaming.

What is Red Teaming?

The red team attacks, the blue team defends. The simple rules of military-born games have entered the cybersecurity realm and are used as part of red teaming projects – a regular simulation of targeted attacks that utilize the methods and tools from the arsenal of real hacker groups.

In information security, there are many options when it comes to evaluating the security level of an organization. These include an analysis of the security of applications and systems, penetration testing, assessment of personnel security awareness, etc. However, ted teaming tends to be the most advanced security assessment approach.

To better understand the red teaming approach, let’s first talk about penetration testing. The essence of the pentest is to find ways to penetrate the network from the outside or from the inside of the network perimeter. Initially, the penetration test is intended only to highlight the possible ways of breaking through the perimeter or escalating user privileges. The pentest is not obliged to offer solutions to the problems found. Before the pentest, the customer sometimes says: “We worked hard to strengthen our protection. We are sure that we will not be hacked. Please check if this is really so.”

The subject of the pentest is the system itself, security settings, network devices and users but not the ability of the security team to detect and resist cyber threats. In the process of implementing pentests, the contractor may request to disable certain security features and add addresses to the white lists. This (Read more...)