Red Team vs Blue Team Defined

A red team/blue team exercise is a cybersecurity assessment technique that uses simulated attacks to gauge the strength of the organizations existing security capabilities and identify areas of improvement in a low-risk environment.

Modeled after military training exercises, this drill is a face-off between two teams of highly trained cybersecurity professionals: a red team that uses real-world adversary tradecraft in an attempt to compromise the environment, and a blue team that consists of incident responders who work within the security unit to identify, assess and respond to the intrusion.

Red team/blue team simulations play an important role in defending the organization against a wide range of cyberattacks from todays sophisticated adversaries. These exercises help organizations:

• Identify points of vulnerability as it relates to people, technologies and systems

• Determine areas of improvement in defensive incident response processes across every phase of the kill chain

• Build the organizations first-hand experience about how to detect and contain a targeted attack

• Develop response and remediation activities to return the environment to a normal operating state