In the world of professional sports, Opposition Analysis – the scientific study of an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses – is widely followed. Professional coaches and managers routinely deploy analytical approaches to counter opposing team strategies. In-depth analyses of preferred plays, attack patterns, formations, and individual player’s strengths and weaknesses are making play more scientific and result-oriented.
Like Opposition Analysis in the sporting world, Red Teaming and attack simulation are making a world of difference in cybersecurity circles by fortifying cybersecurity postures in the face of relentless threats from bad actors.
What is Red Teaming
In its simplest state, Red Teaming could be called a security risk assessment service, and a formalized form of ethical hacking (1). There is however one major difference between the two. While the ethical hacker almost always works alone in an organization, more often than not as an employee, Red Teaming (through the ‘Red Team’) creates an adversarial situation, pitting the Red Team against the ‘Blue Team’ – the organization’s cybersecurity team that is tasked with defending the organization’s cyber systems. Comprised of highly skilled security professionals who are experts on compromising security environments, the Red Team attempts to test the resilience of the organization’s cybersecurity plan, and proactively identify and remediate security lacunae.
The Red and Blue Team engage in a game of cat and mouse, thrust and parry, countering each other’s moves, and creating optimum value for the organization in terms of knowledge of strategies, tools, tactics, and techniques in the process.
A third team called the Purple Team serves to align the Red and the Blue Team, sometimes acting as a go-between to ensure optimal interfacing between the two teams.
Red Teaming is now being offered as a service (RtaaS) by trusted third parties who offer support to organizations seeking professional Red Team services.
What they offer
In terms of objectives, Red Teaming does what Penetration Testing attempts to do – namely informing the organization about inherent weaknesses in its cybersecurity. Red Teaming however adopts a holistic approach by evaluating the overall security posture, unlike Penetration Testing which addresses a specific area. By corollary therefore it is a much longer and more in-depth activity, often running into several weeks or months at a stretch.
Experts however say it provides unmatched insights and a ‘real-world’ experience due to its innovative approach of simulating a face-off between the ‘good guys’ (the Blue Team) and the ‘bad’ ones (the Red Team).
Profiling the Red Team
Members of a Red Team are considered experts in breaching defenses. Experts say that team members typically resemble bad actors – technically astute, perseverant, and highly creative. Amongst their capabilities are an uncanny ability to develop software tools that will breach the best of cyber defenses, social engineering skills based on a deep understanding of the human psyche, and extensive penetration testing experience.
How they work
A Red Team deploys tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that are modeled on strategies used by bad actors. Typical steps in their modus operandi include:
- The reconnaissance phase, where members of the Red Team will gather information about the organization, its data assets, network, software and tools, security architecture and controls, and its cybersecurity team
- The attack planning phase where the team designs attack paths based on weaknesses evident from the reconnaissance carried out
- The execution phase during which the attack to breach the defense systems is launched. Typically attack paths could be social engineering, physical security breach, application penetration testing, network sniffing, data poisoning (2), or brute force credential stuffing (3)
- The reporting phase where the Red Team presents its findings, processes and tools used to breach the system. The report also contains recommendations as to how the risk can be remediated
Optimizing their performance
Often considered the gold standard for testing cybersecurity posture, the effectiveness of the Red Team is never something to be taken for granted. It is imperative that organizations provide them with the best environment if their skills are to be optimized. The Forbes article (4) acts as a guideline for organizations looking to benefit from Red Team activity. Key takeaways include:
- Deploying external resources rather than internalizing the exercise by forming internal teams
- Systematically embarking on the Red Teaming exercise with proper authorization, parameters, and battery limits
- Establishing the scope, objectives, and success criteria of the Red Teaming exercise
- Approaching the exercise/activity with a serious mindset (and not just as an academic exercise or one-off event) and an understanding of the limitations
- Being open to both familiar, new, and surprise situations
- Providing the Red Team with a realistic timeline to achieve its objectives, access to the information and resources needed, and the freedom to operate
- Ensuring diversity in Red Team composition in order to ensure holistic results
- Documenting the key goals and threat hierarchy, strategizing attack planning and execution philosophy accordingly
- Incorporating AI Generative tools into the process
- Ensuring the Purple team role and process is well-defined and supported, as often the focus tends to be on the Red and Blue Teams
- Ensuring a wide and varied target audience in the process for best results
- Conducting an effective debriefing and reporting to gain fully from findings and recommendations
How they benefit
Red Teaming ensures a thorough analysis of an organization’s security posture, threat surfaces, cyber tools, and security protocols. Organizations benefit in terms of understanding how their security investments are paying off, and how ready they are to take on and defend unforeseen threats. In a world where the next attack is waiting to happen, Red Teaming serves as the perfect avenue to ensure fortified defenses and threat-readiness by staying one step ahead of adversaries. In addition to saving the organization from the disastrous consequences of data breaches, ransom, and other threats, it also provides an in-depth analysis and critical insights into:
- The effectiveness of the technology deployed in the organization
- The human resource situation in terms of employee susceptibility to social engineering tactics, as well insider threats due to poorly-defined protocols, ill-defined access levels, and inadequate cyber hygiene
- Third party security quotient via analyses of supply chain, vendor and other stakeholder interface analyses
- Infrastructure shortcomings including access to offices, data centers, and warehouses
The challenges
Implementing Red Teaming is easier than it sounds. A fairly radical method of defense preparation, it often runs into troubled waters for the following reasons:
- Lack of complete buy-in from the top management, often due to the relatively ‘unrestricted’ operating parameters needed by Red Teams to function
- Limited access and visibility due to a lack of cooperation from internal teams
- Time-consuming reconnaissance and process requirements are often a deterrent
- Unrealistic expectations from their activity
- High costs of setting up and implementation
- Highly dynamic and continually-evolving threat landscape that necessitates rework and re-alignment at frequent intervals
Red Teaming has been in the news in recent times for legal aspects related to their appointment, scope of activity, and manner of functioning. Considering their sensitive nature, it is not something to be ignored or taken lightly. More on this subject can be read on this link (7).
However, despite the inherent challenges, Red Teaming remains a core driver of the resilience of the organization’s security posture.
Conclusion
With the ever-increasing average cost of a data breach – the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report (5) puts the average cost of a data breach in 2024 at USD 4.88 million – and a spiraling down of the time required to execute attacks – an IBM Security X-Force study (6) found the time needed to execute ransomware attacks has dropped by 94% over the last few years – it is evident that strategic approaches like Red Teaming cannot be deferred. Organizations embarking on their cybersecurity journey will however continue to be plagued with questions as to whether they choose other tools like Pentesting over it. It is natural. After all, decisions must be based on what is best for the organization in terms of vulnerability testing and resource availability. Forbes offers good advice in their article, suggesting that pentesting works best for organizations in the early phase of their cybersecurity journey, while organizations with a more mature cybersecurity program would do well with appointing a Red Team.
As with the modern world of sports, there’s nothing quite like having the best team in your corner.
References:
- What is Red Teaming? – CrowdStrike
- Data Poisoning and Exactly Why Organizations Need to Take It Seriously – Aurora Systems Consulting Inc. (aurorait.com)
- Common Causes For Malicious Data Breach – Aurora Systems Consulting Inc. (aurorait.com)
- 15 Smart Strategies For Ensuring A Successful Red Team Exercise (forbes.com)
- Cost of Data Breach in 2024: $4.88 Million, Says Latest IBM Study – SecurityWeek
- Red Teaming (ibm.com)
- Legal Implications of PhySec Red Teaming: An Introduction (substack.com)
