Red Teaming
Our most experienced pentesters employ offensive techniques used by actual attackers to access specific systems or data.
The goal is to assess your company’s exposure to security breaches and recommend concrete measures to address them.
What is Red Teaming?
Red Teaming, or Red Team exercise, is a cybersecurity assessment in which an ethical hacking team simulates and sequences a complete attack against a company, going from information gathering to the full takeover of the infrastructure, exploiting any relevant technical or human vulnerability that may grant access to specific assets or information.
It is a more offensive and realistic approach than penetration testing (pentesting), which also tests how the Blue Team (the client’s defensive cybersecurity team) responds to such attacks.
The objective is to expose flaws in an organisation’s security strategy and to provide recommendations to improve it.
Red Team strategies and tools
Our Red Team experts are trained to use all the techniques employed by actual attackers, such as:
Gathering of publicly available information that is relevant to prepare the attack and to spot potential weak points, services, or targets.
Phishing, phoning, and other similar tactics are used to break into a company’s system and retrieve sensitive information.
This malware locks and encrypts data, leaving organisations in the position of having to pay a ransom to avoid losing their data.
Getting inside a company’s infrastructure by guessing an account’s common or weak password.
Getting physical access to internal infrastructure. It may involve exploiting human knowledge or equipment like Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) access control, surveillance cameras or alarms.
Different players and approaches
Red Team vs. Blue Team vs. Purple Team
Red Team
Experienced pentesters – usually part of an exempt external service provider – that replicate what actual attackers would do. They try to break through the defensive wall of the Blue Team, while avoid being detected.
Blue Team
They are part of the company’s IT security team, and their objective is to defend the organisation from the attackers, including the Red Team’s attempts, using whatever security measures and tools they work with on a daily basis.
Purple Team
Not exactly a team, but an approach in which the Red and Blue teams work collaboratively throughout the exercise. A bit of realism is given up in favour of better communication between the two teams, allowing them to react and improve faster and continuously.
How does a Red Team exercise unfold?
Our Red Team experts follow the TIBER-EU framework, published by the European Central Bank. The main steps are:
Benefits of Red Teaming
Stay ahead of cyberattackers
Get inside hackers’ minds, predict how they can damage your business and prepare to avoid it.
Identify vulnerabilities
Red Team exercises detect and assess security weaknesses in your systems to help you address them and prepare for future risks and threats.
Build cybersecurity resilience
By implementing recommended measures, your company will be much more prepared to prevent, detect and respond to potentially damaging cyber threats.
Avoid financial and reputational damages
Improving your cybersecurity posture means you’ll be able to prevent data exfiltration, as well as consequent financial and reputational damages.
Ensure compliance
Being cyber-ready and practicing regular security audits also guarantees that your company complies with industry-relevant standards and legislations.
Promote security teams’ continuous learning
Specifically for Blue Teams (usually part of the company), Red Teaming exercises can be extremely valuable and a great opportunity to learn how attackers can be detected and stopped.
Red Teaming vs. Pentesting
|
Red Teaming |
Pentesting |
Objective |
Assess how actual attackers can harm an entire entity, retrieve critical data or cause further damages. |
Detect vulnerabilities affecting a specific scope. |
Target |
Entire group, entity or service. |
Limited to one or few infrastructures, systems or applications. |
Timeframe |
Few weeks – Several months. |
Few days – Several weeks. |
Blue Team perspective |
Unaware a Red Team exercise is taking place, the Blue Team is tested and trained to detect and prevent complex attacks. |
Aware a Pentest is taking place, the Blue Team may learn how to detect specific vulnerabilities. |
Results |
Report with the details of the attack, kill chains, vulnerabilities, evaluation of the global entity’s security posture, and recommendations for improvement. |
Report with an evaluation of the scope’s technical security posture, a list of detected vulnerabilities, and technical recommendations for corrective actions. |
Red Teaming
- Objective: Assess how actual attackers can harm an entire entity, retrieve critical data or cause further damages.
- Target: Entire group, entity or service.
- Timeframe: Few weeks – Several months.
- Blue Team perspective: Unaware a Red Team exercise is taking place, the Blue Team is tested and trained to detect and prevent complex attacks.
- Results: Report with the details of the attack, kill chains, vulnerabilities, evaluation of the global entity’s security posture, and recommendations for improvement.
Pentesting
- Objective: Detect vulnerabilities affecting a specific scope.
- Target: Limited to one or few infrastructures, systems or applications.
- Timeframe: Few days – Several weeks.
- Blue Team perspective: Aware a Pentest is taking place, the Blue Team may learn how to detect specific vulnerabilities.
- Results: Report with an evaluation of the scope’s technical security posture, a list of detected vulnerabilities, and technical recommendations for corrective actions.
Our experts are certified
Alter Solutions is a qualified Information Systems Security Audit Provider, a certification issued by the French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI), one of the most prestigious cybersecurity authorities in Europe.
This certifies the competence and reliability of our auditors to carry out security audits for all scopes:
- Organisational and physical audit
- Architecture audit
- Configuration audit
- Code audit
- Intrusion testing / Pentesting
NIS 2 Compliance Consulting
Our Articles
Our Case Studies
FAQ
Red Team Pentesting conducts assessments on various systems. Often, the critical security vulnerabilities are not tied to the specific technology of the system, allowing for successful testing of new system types.
Yes, Red Team may incorporate social engineering tactics.
Realistic attack simulation, optimisation of incident management processes, and validation of security investments.