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Red Teaming


Your organization is under attack. The volume and sophistication of targeted and opportunistic attacks are increasing. Cyber fraud, ransomware, supply chain attacks, or insider threats are just some of the threats you face. Test how well your cyber defenses hold up against realistic malicious actors through Red Teaming.


Preparing your organization for such events requires more than deploying security controls. It also requires training your Blue Team to respond correctly to these low-frequency, high-impact events. The biggest gain from performing a Red Teaming assessment, besides finding previously unknown vulnerabilities, is the opportunity for your defenders to live through an actual attack in a safe setting.


Discover more about Red Teaming:

  1. What is Red Teaming?
  2. The process of a Red Teaming attack
  3. Different types of Red Teaming
  4. What do you gain from performing a Red Team assessment?
  5. The Red Team, Blue Team, White Team, and Purple Team
  6. Secura's Red Team
Red Teaming

What is Red Teaming?

Red Teaming is a security discipline originating in the military arena that simulates full-spectrum cyber-attacks. This allows you to measure your cyber defense’s effectiveness against malicious actors and allows your defenders to practice their detection and response capabilities in a controlled environment and validate or refine them. Lastly, the Red Team can also expose gaps in your overall security defense capabilities by targeting your organization and not being confined by the constraints of a regular penetration test.

Red team

Suppose you want to know how good you are at detecting spearphishing attacks by sophisticated cybercrime actors or whether your detection capabilities are indeed seeing Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). In that case, there is only one way to know: to test these processes by performing these attacks as a malicious attacker would. The Red Team will simulate the attack. The Blue Team, responsible for defending, can be involved in various ways (or not at all). The White Team (the observers) can escalate and de-escalate when necessary.

The Process of Red Teaming


Phase 1 - Planning and Preparation

Managing the process starts with planning and careful preparation. A dedicated project manager works together with the Red Team lead and the White Team to create a schedule and a dedicated set of rules of engagement. Throughout the engagement, this schedule is followed and adjusted where necessary. Risks and scenarios are assessed continually. The Red Team will constantly communicate with the White Team via weekly scheduled meetings, a secure chat group, and additional calls where necessary. This ensures that the White Team is in full control of the attack.

Phase 2 - The Attack

After careful consideration and planning, our consultants will go on the attack and attempt to access your so-called ‘crown jewels’ in any way possible. Depending on the target, Secura will use a mixture of offensive social engineering and computer network attack techniques as a real-world malicious actor would. Techniques used are mystery guest, phishing, vishing, attacks from the internet, and computer networking attacks in your internal networks.

Phase 3 - Clean Closure

Once the attack is over, the so-called clean closure stage begins. This stage does not only mean managing the leftover digital remnants of the executed attacks. It also means providing the Blue Team with one or more evaluation sessions where the complete timeline is replayed in a workshop, maximizing learning and awareness. The end result of this phase is a detailed technical report and a perspective on your overall security maturity in your threat landscape

Secura follows the following “kill-chain” for all our Red Teaming assessments:

Process Red Teaming

Types of Red Teaming


Red Teaming is gaining popularity in all sectors, from financials to public organizations and even (critical) industry as a security discipline. Secura, however, believes that there is not one Red Teaming program that can fit every type of organization. That's why Secura uses service levels for Red Teaming, with a differentiation in the Red Team assessment's depth, variety, and duration. This allows you to choose which service level is the right fit for your organization and budget in consultation with our Red Team managers. Next, all-service levels work with the MITRE ATT&CK framework and offer the opportunity to work in a Purple Teaming setup (a combined effort between Red and Blue).

Weeks

Red Teaming Modular

Are you up for the next step after pentesting? This modular approach uses the strengths and benefits of a full-scale Red Team assessment by picking the most relevant attacks for your organization. The stealth of the Red Team is secondary to obtaining objectives. This, combined with more information about your organization up front, results in an attractive budget while still targeting your employees’ security awareness and your organization’s digital security.


Red Teaming Core

Red Teaming Core is a full-blown attack simulation for medium to large businesses that employ their own Blue Teams. This type will condense extensive threat landscape analysis and reconnaissance into challenging attack scenarios. These scenarios are based on real-world threat actors, and Secura will emulate these groups by using similar Techniques, Tactics, and Procedures (TTP’s) as defined in the MITRE ATT&CK Framework. To stay within an attractive budget, so-called Leg Up’s are discussed up front to make sure the assessment can continue when your defenses in a specific area are already sufficient to delay the Red Team enough.


Red Teaming Pro

The Pro variant of Red Teaming is a step up for organizations with very mature Blue Teams and a high level of cyber resilience. Attacking a mature organization such as yours requires much more effort by the Red Team to, for example, deploy malware that bypasses your EDR solution. Here the Red Team works as a completely independent group, and Leg Up scenarios are only used as a last resort. The Red Teaming Pro is the most realistic simulation of attacks by Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) against your organization.


Red Teaming in OT

Similar to our Red Teaming Pro service, but specifically focused on generating a low volume and simulated high impact events on your ICS and SCADA control systems. Attackers targeting these environments use different tactics, resulting in a tailor-made process that mitigates any operational environment risks.

Read more about Red Teaming in OT.


TIBER

TIBER stands for Threat Intelligence Based Ethical Red Teaming and is part of the financial sector’s effort to improve cyber resilience under the guidance of the Dutch National Bank. Also, more cyber security frameworks and regulations mention TIBER-like tests for other sectors. Secura will work with you to ensure that your organization will be tested according to the correct requirements.

Secura’s experience in Red Teaming, combined with our capabilities, passion, and TIBER-specific experience, provides our customers with the best possible basis for the clean, solid execution and management of TIBER engagements. Therefore Secura is capable of functioning as Red Teaming Provider (RTP), complying with the requirements for Red Teaming Provider (RTP) in the TIBER-NL guidelines.

Read more about TIBER.


ZORRO

ZORRO stands for "ZOrg Red teaming Resilience Exercises." This framework, developed by Z-CERT, aims to structurally improve the cyber resilience of participating healthcare providers and the healthcare industry in general.

Secura offers a cost-effective testing program that meets the requirements of the ZORRO methodology. To be able and allowed to test under ZORRO, agreements have been made in advance between Secura, Z-CERT and the healthcare organization.


Crisis management

Secura confronts your crisis management team with a challenging but realistic cyber threat incident to test cooperation and coordination. During a one-day tabletop session, your team will be presented with so-called injects, providing a realistic feel in a simulated and controlled environment. Such a tabletop session is beneficial for developing your cyber crisis management skills and preparing the team for other high-impact incidents.

What do you gain from performing a Red Team assessment?

Red Team

Red Teaming is very different from traditional Pentesting. A Red Team can combine vulnerabilities from different classes of attacks, for example, social engineering and attacks on the external infrastructure, to find otherwise unknown weaknesses. This is contrary to pentests, where the scope is limited to a single network or application.

Red Teaming tests your defenders' capability to detect, respond and mitigate attacks in a realistic setting. It trains them to react during a real attack and shows them where detection capabilities need to be improved.

The Red Team, Blue Team, White Team, and Purple Team


Red Team


In a red teaming assessment, the Red Team assumes the role of a hostile attacker who challenges the organization's cyber security. At this moment, realistic attack scenarios are simulated. This means that on the defenders' side, it is not (completely) known what the Red Team is doing. Often very few people are aware of the fact that an RT assessment is being carried out so that the 'authenticity' of this 'digital fire exercise' is optimal. Therefore, it is necessary to appoint teams on the client side as well.


Blue Team


The Blue Team is in charge of defending the networks, systems, and applications. These are your most important assets in detecting, responding, and mitigating cyber attacks. This team is generally unaware of this simulation to increase realism and test response.


White Team


The White Team acts as a link between the Red Team and the Blue Team. The White Team consists of employees from your organization and Secura, who can escalate and de-escalate with the Blue Team and the Red Team. This team is informed of all attacks by the Red Team and is mandated to start, stop and approve attacks.


Purple Team


The Blue Team is generally not informed of this simulation to increase realism and test response. In some cases, the Blue Team may be informed during the red teaming assessment so that no unnecessary time is wasted when it is clear by now what is going on. In such a case, joint action with the Blue Team is taken along the way and is then called 'Purple Teaming'.

Secura's Red Team!

20220325 The Arrows Secura HR 228489

An attacker uses a vast arsenal of tools to abuse all aspects of your digital security, technology, physical security, and human behavior to access your most important crown jewels. To mimic this type of attack requires a team of experienced hackers and social engineers with the proper knowledge, broad experience, and many specialties. Secura has built this knowledge, experience, and specialties into its team over the past twenty years. Therefore, our multidisciplinary team consists of top specialists with knowledge and experience in the three security domains: technology, physical security, and human behavior.

Our Red Teamers hold relevant certifications such as Certified Red Team Professional (CRTP), Certified Red Team Operator (CRTO), Certified Red Team Expert (CRTE), Master Level Social Engineer (MLSE), and many others.

Secura's experience in red teaming, combined with our capabilities, passion, and industry-specific experience, provides our clients with the best possible foundation for clean, solid execution and management of Red Teaming engagements.


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Fact sheets

Secura Red Teaming

What is Red Teaming? What are the different teams and types of red teaming?

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Red Teaming in OT

Our Red Teaming Services for OT

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White papers

Interested in a Red Team Simulation?

Partners of Secura

Cybersecurity is more than technology alone. Secura collaborates with partners in compliance and risk management, integrated application security, privacy, IT- and internet law and certification.