Cybersecurity has a lot in common with games. Like chess, strategy and planning is crucial for victory. But in chess, players can see their opponent’s pieces and respond accordingly. Real-world cybersecurity incidents are more like military operations, where that kind of visibility is not guaranteed. 

Military leaders have been using war games to train officers for at least two centuries. These games put two opposing teams—a red team and a blue team—against one another in a specific conflict, designed to be as realistic as possible. Each side tries to achieve its objectives while preventing the other from achieving theirs.  

Cybersecurity experts used these training operations as the foundation for incident response simulations. Penetration tests, capture-the-flag events, and live-fire cyber exercises all pit red teams against blue teams so that security leaders can analyze the results and harden their cybersecurity defenses against real threat actors. 

What is a red team? 

The red team focuses on offense. They take on the role of threat actors attempting to breach the organization’s cybersecurity defenses. Red teamers use real-world hacking techniques to break into the organization’s systems and test its ability to respond. 

Red teams may have a variety of resources to work with, depending on the specific exercise. In blind testing environment, the red team has no inside information or pre-established access to internal assets. In an internal testing exercise, the red team may be role-playing a malicious insider with full access, attempting to exfiltrate data without triggering any alerts or investigations. 

It takes special skills and training to succeed as a red team professional. Depending on the specific exercise, red teams may include one or more of the following: 

• Penetration testers simulate cyberattacks to find out how vulnerable systems and networks are. They may use known or unknown attack techniques to test the organization’s incident response strategy. 

• Ethical hackers use real-world threat actor techniques to assess the organization’s security posture. They use this information to make recommendations that improve cybersecurity resilience against those techniques. 

• Social engineers bypass security controls by manipulating individuals. They may pose as customers, employees, or other stakeholders that people trust. 

• Vulnerability analysts use scanning tools to identify vulnerabilities in an organization’s security posture. This information tells other red team members how to successfully break into an organization’s IT systems. 

• Threat analysts are responsible for studying real-world threat actor techniques. Their knowledge allows the red team to replicate these attacks in a simulated environment. 

• Security auditors are responsible for maintaining compliance, and ensuring everyone follows the appropriate policies. They will report on the outcome of the exercise once it is finished. 

• Red team leaders manage the team and plan the overall attack strategy. They decide how to coordinate the red team and provision resources so that it can achieve its objectives. 

What is a blue team? 

The blue team is responsible for protecting the organization against the red team’s attack. These security professionals focus on defense, using a variety of tools and techniques to prevent red team operators from achieving their goals. 

Blue teamers typically use the security resources and tech stack of the organization running the exercise. Sometimes cybersecurity vendors and service providers will provide additional technology or resources to show how they work in a real-world attack scenario. 

To succeed on the blue team, security professionals need to focus on threat prevention, detection, and response. Most blue teams include the following roles: 

• Security analysts monitor the IT environment looking for threats. They find and investigate suspicious activity to identify indicators of compromise on the network. 

• Incident responders take action once a security breach is detected. They use a variety of tools to isolate compromised assets and mitigate risk, making it harder for the red team to succeed. 

• Vulnerability managers identify exposed vulnerabilities and take steps to remediate them. This helps close security gaps that threat actors can exploit to gain unauthorized access. 

• Security engineers design and implement security solutions for the blue team. This might mean adjusting Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) detection rules or improving the way third-party security tools integrate with one another. 

• System administrators adopt and enforce security policies across the organization’s IT environment. They have an important role to play in translating blue team recommendations into real-world results. 

• Threat hunters search for threats hiding in the organization’s network. Proactively hunting for threats increases the blue team’s chances of finding threat activity before it becomes a critical issue. 

• Cybersecurity evaluators conduct tests and analyze the effectiveness of the blue team’s security measures. They help create reports that illustrate what the team did right, and where it made mistakes during the exercise. 

• Blue team leaders take responsibility for the team’s strategy and operations during the exercise. They make sure other team members have everything they need to repel the red team’s attack. 

Introducing the purple team 

Some cybersecurity exercises include a third team that includes members collaborating openly across offensive and defensive lines. This is the purple team, which mixes expertise from both sides to establish alignment on the organization’s overall cybersecurity strategy. 

Traditionally, the red team and blue team operate independently of one another. Sometimes the blue team isn’t even aware that a testing exercise is happening at all. 

Having a purple team can allow information to travel between red teams and blue teams without compromising the exercise. This allows the offensive team to focus their efforts where it will have the highest impact and gives defenders insights into how they can improve their operations. 

Some organizations divide these exercises into multiple stages so that individual team members have room to experiment. This gives each team retrospective insights they can apply to each new iteration of the exercise, giving team members a chance to improve their performance. 

Assess your cybersecurity readiness with Lumifi 

In a real-life incident response scenario, attackers will do their best to hide their activities and disrupt your security operations. Security assessment and testing give organizations a clear roadmap for closing security gaps and improving detection and response capabilities. 

Have Lumifi’s team of security experts conduct a comprehensive assessment of your organization’s risk profile. Discover how well your security strategy performs against real-world threat scenarios informed by our extensive incident response experience. Talk to an expert to learn more.