A red team is a group of security professionals that are authorised to simulate sophisticated, real-world attacks against an organisation’s entire security infrastructure, including technical systems, physical security, and personnel.
Unlike standard penetration testing that focuses on specific systems or applications within a defined scope, red team exercises are broader and more adversarial in nature. Red teams employ the full range of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that advanced persistent threats (APTs) and cyber criminal groups use: including social engineering, physical infiltration, and multi-stage attack campaigns that can span weeks or months.
The primary goal of red teaming is to test an organisation’s detection and response capabilities and, not just to find vulnerabilities, but to see if the security operations centre (SOC) and incident response teams can identify and stop the attack in progress.
Red team engagements provide invaluable insights into security gaps, revealing blind spots in monitoring, weaknesses in incident response procedures, and realistic assessments of how the organisation would fare against determined attackers. These exercises are typically conducted by organisations with mature security programmes looking to validate their defensive capabilities and identify areas for improvement before facing actual threats.