Blue Teaming vs Red Teaming

What is Blue Teaming vs Red Teaming?

The last few years have witnessed the nature of cyber-attacks change – according to the latest government statistics, there has been a dramatic rise in phishing attacks, pointing to the trend of hackers specifically targeting remote workers. This increase in social engineering means that it is now crucial for business leaders to secure both their systems and their workforce if they want comprehensive data protection.

Enforcing offensive security techniques is therefore a necessity for organisations to be truly prepared for a cyber-attack.

One method gaining popularity is ‘red teaming’ vs ‘blue teaming’, a strategic exercise undertaken by cyber-security professionals to both attack and defend, and one that is particularly popular within high-risk trades such as government or defence industries.

Originating in the armed forces, the red team vs blue team practice has been modelled on military training exercises to provide an all-encompassing approach to attacking and defending. Essentially, anything aimed at purposefully attacking is deemed as red, and anything aimed at defending is deemed as blue. This military-based approach can easily be transferred into robust cyber-security testing methodologies for businesses to gauge how and where their network security or workforce could be compromised, therefore gaining actionable guidance for improvement.

What is Red Teaming?

If your organisation opts to utilise this cyber security exercise, the ‘Red Team’ would consist of highly-trained, offensive security professionals. These ‘Ethical Hackers’ will then perform a range of multi-faceted, cyber warfare and attack simulation methods, with the goal of exploiting any and all weaknesses to infiltrate your systems, compromising your data and avoid intrusion detection systems (IDS). These experts can also test your current security defenders if you have an internal security team.

The Red Team would use real-world techniques and adversary tactics in order to gain initial access, including:

• Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking
• Social Engineering
• Phishing Campaigns
• Threat Emulation

What is Blue Teaming?

Blue Teaming, on the other hand, usually consists of a team of defensive cybersecurity and incident response professionals – dedicated to defending the internal network against threats. The Blue Team would usually discover the scope of what needs protection through security audits, and carry out a risk assessment for all assets, before performing the proactive defensive operations required to strengthen and protect the network. These operations can include:

• Cybersecurity Training and Employee Awareness
• Vulnerability Assessments and Vulnerability Management
• SIEM Solutions
• Security by Design
• Security Operations Centre (SOC)
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
• Threat Detection
• Compliance and Regulatory Frameworks

Red Team VS Blue Team

Essentially, a successful Red Team Blue Team exercise involves the Red Team ‘white hat hacking’ (otherwise known as Ethical Hacking) the Blue Team in order to test how secure the network is, in addition to how effective the Blue Team’s incident response process is.

Once the simulated attacks have taken place, the teams can report their findings. If the Red Team successfully gained unauthorised entry, they can then advise the Blue Team on what preventative measures to take in order to mitigate the core impact of a real attack. This concept is also known as ‘Purple Teaming’ where red and blue work together to develop stronger security controls.

Communication between these two teams is key for success – the Red Team should stay at the forefront of the threat landscape, keeping up-to-date with relevant real-world methods being used by hackers, and informing the blue team on any new threats who can then adopt the appropriative defensive measures. Likewise, the Blue Team should stay fully informed on the innovative technologies emerging to improve security.

Key Benefits of Red Teaming VS Blue Teaming

Utilising the methods used in a red team vs blue team exercise, within your organisation, will not only allow you to identify flaws in your existing security solutions, it will also improve your overarching cyber-security strategy.

Through pro-actively testing your organisation’s defences in a low-risk environment, you are able to constantly evolve your security strategy based on relevant, real-world threats, patching any existing vulnerabilities and testing and improving your incident response plan.

Through essentially finding the gaps, before fixing the gaps, this ethical hacking training exercise ensures that any weaknesses in the people, technologies or systems of your organisation are detected and resolved with no real risk to the business.

Other Team Colours – What is Purple Teaming?

When you mix red and blue you get purple. Purple Teaming is where both red and blue security team roles mix and take a collaborative approach and bring together attack and defence strategies. The objectives of purple teaming are to share feedback, increase efficiency, gain immediate feedback and create tailored security measures. To achieve these objectives red and blue teams will conduct joint exercises. These will not differ too far from the usual tasks of the teams, however, more information is shared during debriefing and analysis. This shared knowledge helps the red team share tactics, techniques and procedures with the Blue team. These in turn will help the blue team prepare for real-world scenarios and keep up to date with cybersecurity trends.

The benefits of purple teaming are that extra insights are gained and a better cyber resilience security strategy is created, especially against advanced persistent threats (APT).

How Stripe OLT’s Ethical Hackers Can Help

Here at Stripe OLT, we are CREST certified Penetration Testers. Our dedicated security team are also SANs, QSTM and GCHQ certified, in addition to holding the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) qualification – the recognised credential of choice for those looking to pursue Ethical Hacking.

With both our expertise and experience, Stripe OLT are best placed to provide the ‘red team’ to your internal IT security team, should you require offensive security and penetration testing. If you require defensive, or ‘blue team’ services, we additionally provide a range of solutions to help you gain insight whilst strengthening the existing gaps in your security posture.

Want to know more about our Red Teaming Assessment?