Red Teaming Service

What Is Red Teaming?

Red teaming is an advanced security exercise that measures an organisation's cyber security level by imitating the techniques, tactics and procedures real attackers use. Unlike classic penetration testing, the aim of a red team engagement is not only to identify security vulnerabilities but to assess how effective the organisation's existing defensive mechanisms are against a genuine targeted attack.

In a red team operation, the testing team behaves like a real attacker. The organisation's external attack surface can be researched, social engineering scenarios can be run against employees, technical vulnerabilities can be exploited, user accounts can be compromised, and controlled scenarios can be carried out for moving through the corporate network.

Red teaming is therefore not merely a technical security test.

It is also a comprehensive cyber attack simulation in which the organisation's:

people, process and technology

components are tested together.

The red teaming service delivered by SecureSys assesses organisations from an attacker's perspective and measures how effective their existing security investment is against real attack scenarios.

Why Is a Red Teaming Service Necessary?

Organisations make significant investment in their cyber security infrastructure.

Firewalls, EDR, XDR, SIEM, NDR, WAF, DLP, PAM, email security systems, MFA solutions and SOC services are all important parts of an organisation's defensive architecture.

Having purchased these technologies, however, does not mean they work effectively against real attacks.

A security product being technically deployed and being able to detect and stop a genuine attack are different matters.

The fundamental purpose of a red team operation is to expose that difference.

Even where an organisation uses EDR, for example, it may be possible to apply certain attack techniques without generating an alert.

A SIEM may be collecting a large volume of logs while lacking the correlation rules needed to connect the whole attack chain.

The SOC team may see the alert but be slow to take the right action.

Red teaming therefore tests not only the organisation's vulnerabilities but its defensive capacity.

The Difference Between Red Teaming and Penetration Testing

Red teaming and penetration testing are frequently confused.

Although both are carried out from an attacker's perspective, their aims and scope differ.

The main goal of a penetration test is to identify and report the vulnerabilities present on defined systems.

In a web application penetration test, for example, SQL injection, XSS, broken access control or authentication problems in the application are investigated.

In a red team engagement, the question is different:

"If a real attacker wanted to attack this organisation, could they reach the critical system or information they were targeting?"

A red team operation may therefore not be limited to a single system.

An attack can begin from the external network, continue through social engineering, move into the corporate network by compromising a user account, and progress through Active Directory as far as critical servers.

The value of red teaming lies precisely in its ability to test these attack chains.

How Is Red Teaming Carried Out?

A professional red team operation does not consist of applying attack techniques at random.

Before the test, the scope, objectives and rules of the operation are agreed with the organisation.

This is generally referred to as the rules of engagement – RoE.

Which systems the red team may act against, which attack techniques may be used, which systems are excluded from scope and when the operation will be terminated are all determined in advance.

The attack scenario is then built.

That scenario can be designed to resemble the way real threat actors operate.

An attack chain can be built that progresses, for example, as:

Reconnaissance → Initial Access → Privilege Escalation → Persistence → Lateral Movement → Credential Harvesting → Critical System Access → Objective Achieved

The Core Stages of a Red Team Operation

1. Scope and Objective Definition

The first stage of a red team operation is agreeing the objectives with the organisation.

The aim is not simply to find as many vulnerabilities as possible.

A successful red team operation must have clear objectives.

The test objective may, for example, be to reach a critical server, access a particular data set, compromise a user account, obtain highly privileged access in Active Directory, or measure how long the SOC team takes to detect the attack.

These objectives are set according to the organisation's risk profile.

2. Open Source Intelligence and Reconnaissance

Real attackers gather detailed information before attacking their target.

This stage can be described as OSINT – open source intelligence.

The organisation's internet-facing assets, domain structures, subdomains, the technologies in use, employee information and publicly available technical information can all be assessed.

The aim is to understand the organisation's attack surface.

This stage plays an important role in planning the later steps of the attack.

3. Attack Surface Analysis

The organisation's internet-accessible systems are analysed.

Web applications, VPN services, remote access systems, email infrastructure, API services and other internet services can all be assessed.

Vulnerabilities or misconfigurations usable from an attacker's perspective are investigated.

The findings from this stage can be the starting point for the subsequent attack steps.

4. Initial Access

One of the most critical stages of a red team operation is initial access.

Various methods can be used for the attacker to gain first access to the organisation's infrastructure.

The initial access point may, for example, be a vulnerable internet service, a web application vulnerability, a phishing attack, compromised user credentials or a misconfigured remote access system.

The methods used at this stage are carried out within the scope and permissions agreed before the operation.

5. Privilege Escalation

After gaining initial access inside the organisation, the attacker attempts to increase the privileges they hold.

This is referred to as privilege escalation.

Escalating a local user account to administrator, or compromising accounts with higher access privileges within the organisation, can allow the attack chain to progress.

The red team assesses the misconfigurations, weak access controls and authorisation problems present in the systems.

6. Credential Harvesting

User accounts are among the most valuable targets in modern corporate attacks.

Compromising a user's username and password can allow the attacker to act as a normal user inside the organisation.

In red team operations, the risks relating to password hashes, tokens, service accounts and other authentication data can be assessed within scope.

This stage can make the attack chain considerably easier to advance, particularly in Active Directory environments.

7. Lateral Movement

An attacker does not want to remain on the system where they first gained access.

The aim is to move towards other systems within the organisation.

This is referred to as lateral movement.

An attack chain can form that moves, for example, from a compromised user computer to a file server, then to an application server and then towards the Active Directory infrastructure.

Lateral movement reveals how effective the organisation's network segmentation and access control structures really are.

Active Directory and Red Teaming

Active Directory is one of the most critical targets in red team operations.

In many organisations, users, computers and access permissions are all managed through Active Directory.

An attacker obtaining high privilege in the domain environment can end up controlling a large part of the organisation's infrastructure.

A red team operation can analyse the attack paths present within the Active Directory structure.

Depending on scope, the applicability of techniques such as:

Kerberoasting, AS-REP roasting, pass-the-hash, pass-the-ticket, delegation abuse, privilege escalation and lateral movement

can be assessed.

The aim here is not simply to apply particular attack techniques.

The real aim is to expose the chains within the organisation's identity and authorisation architecture that attackers could use.

Social Engineering and Red Teaming

A significant proportion of cyber attacks target the human factor.

Even where technical security controls are strong, deceiving employees can allow attackers to gain initial access to the organisation.

Social engineering scenarios can therefore be used within scope in red team operations.

Employees' security awareness can be tested using phishing emails, fake login pages or social engineering scenarios prepared specifically for the organisation.

This work should not be carried out simply to measure whether employees make mistakes.

The real aim is to assess the organisation's:

email security systems, user awareness, MFA mechanisms, SOC processes and incident response capacity together.

Red Teaming and MITRE ATT&CK

One of the most widely used structures for modelling attacker behaviour in red team operations is the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

MITRE ATT&CK is a comprehensive knowledge base categorising the techniques and tactics real attackers use.

Using MITRE ATT&CK in a red team operation can help prepare test scenarios more systematically.

The techniques used during the operation can be mapped to the different attack stages.

These tactics include:

reconnaissance, initial access, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, credential access, discovery, lateral movement, command and control, and exfiltration

This approach allows the organisation to see not only "which vulnerability was found" but also which techniques the attacker was able to progress with.

Red Team and Blue Team

In security operations, the red team can be described as the team taking the attacker's role.

The blue team is the organisation's defensive team.

The blue team can include SOC analysts, security engineers, system administrators and incident response teams.

During a red team operation, while the attacking team carries out controlled attacks, the blue team attempts to detect and block that activity.

This approach helps measure the organisation's defensive capacity against real attacks.

What Is Purple Teaming?

Red and blue teams working in collaboration constitutes a purple teaming approach.

The aim in purple team work is not for the attacking and defending teams to operate entirely independently of one another.

The red team can share the attack techniques it uses with the blue team.

The blue team then analyses how to detect those techniques in SIEM, EDR, XDR, NDR or other security systems.

The attack simulation is in this way turned directly into defensive development work.

The red team applies a particular credential dumping technique, for example.

The blue team checks whether the existing EDR system detects that activity.

If no alert is generated, a detection rule can be developed.

The same technique is then applied again to validate the new rule.

This cycle matures the organisation's security operations.

Measuring SOC Performance With Red Teaming

One of the important applications of red team operations is assessing SOC team performance.

An organisation may have a large number of security products and a central SOC.

When a real attack occurs, however, the following should be measured:

how long the attack took to detect, which alert was generated, whether the analyst interpreted the attack correctly, whether the event was escalated, and what the response time was

Red team operations make it possible to test these processes in a controlled environment.

The operational as well as the technological effectiveness of SOC investment can then be assessed.

Which Organisations Is Red Teaming Suitable For?

Red teaming can deliver high value particularly for organisations that have reached a certain level of cyber security maturity.

Financial institutions, defence industry companies, public bodies, telecommunications companies, energy organisations, large holding companies, technology firms and critical infrastructure operators can all benefit from red team operations.

Red teaming is not aimed at large organisations alone, however.

It can also be applied in organisations that process critical data or where a cyber attack could seriously affect business continuity.

Which Systems Can Red Teaming Cover?

Red team operations can cover different systems according to the objectives the organisation sets.

These can include:

internet-facing systems, external network infrastructure, web applications, API services, VPN systems, Active Directory, user computers, email infrastructure, wireless networks, cloud systems and critical servers

Scope should be determined according to the organisation's risk profile.

Confidentiality in a Red Team Operation

Because red team operations are carried out against an organisation's critical systems and its employees, they require a high level of confidentiality.

The test scope and permissions must be defined clearly before the operation.

Which systems may be tested, which techniques are prohibited and who is to be contacted in an emergency must all be documented.

The information obtained during the test must be used only for the purposes of the project and protected in line with the organisation's information security policies.

SecureSys prioritises a controlled testing approach and operational continuity in its red team work.

Reporting After Red Teaming

Red team reports can have a different structure from classic pentest reports.

The most important output of a red team operation is not simply a list of the vulnerabilities found.

The reporting can show step by step how the attack progressed.

For example:

Initial access was gained → a user account was compromised → the internal network was reached → credentials were obtained → lateral movement was carried out → Active Directory privileges were escalated → the critical target was reached.

This attack chain makes it easier for the organisation to understand its most critical security weaknesses.

It can also be assessed at which stages the security products generated alerts and which attack techniques went undetected.

What Does the Organisation Gain From Red Teaming?

The output of a successful red team operation is not simply a security report.

The organisation sees how real attackers could progress through its systems.

It measures how effective its existing security investment is.

It assesses the performance of its SOC and incident response processes.

It identifies the critical attack paths.

It tests the detection capacity of security systems such as EDR, XDR, SIEM and NDR.

It identifies network segmentation and identity security problems.

It can measure employee awareness.

Red teaming ultimately helps measure the organisation's real cyber resilience.

How Often Should Red Teaming Be Carried Out?

The frequency of red team work should be determined according to the organisation's risk level, sector and security maturity.

In high-risk organisations, carrying out red team work periodically can be valuable.

A red team operation can be planned in particular after:

major infrastructure changes, the go-live of new critical systems, significant security investment, SOC transformation projects or serious security incidents.

The aim is not to test once, but to measure how the security level develops over time.

Red Teaming and Cyber Resilience

One of the fundamental goals of cyber security is not to assume that attacks can be prevented entirely.

The modern approach accepts that an attack may occur and aims to increase the organisation's capacity to detect, contain and respond to it.

This forms the basis of the concept of cyber resilience.

Red team operations are one of the most effective ways of testing an organisation's cyber resilience against real attack scenarios.

As well as whether an attacker was able to reach the system, the following are also measured:

how far they were able to progress, how long they were able to remain undetected, and which security controls were able to stop the attack

Why the SecureSys Red Teaming Service?

Red teaming requires a higher level of expertise than classic security scanning.

The team carrying out the operation has to be experienced in network security, web security, Active Directory, social engineering, attack simulation and security products.

The SecureSys red teaming service assesses organisations' defensive capability against real attacker behaviour.

Within scope, the work can use MITRE ATT&CK-based attack scenarios, manual attack techniques and operation plans tailored to the organisation's risk profile.

In the SecureSys approach, the aim is not to damage as many systems as possible or simply to produce a large number of findings.

The aim is to expose the organisation's most critical attack paths and to leave the defensive teams better prepared against those attacks.

SecureSys is a Türkiye-based cyber security company providing red teaming, penetration testing, Active Directory security testing, social engineering, attack simulation and other offensive security services.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is red teaming?

Red teaming is a comprehensive attack simulation that tests the security of an organisation's people, process and technology components by imitating the techniques of real attackers.

Are red teaming and penetration testing the same?

No. A penetration test focuses on finding vulnerabilities on defined systems, whereas red teaming carries out an end-to-end attack scenario in order to reach a defined critical objective.

How long does a red team engagement take?

The duration depends on scope and objectives. Small engagements take a few weeks, while comprehensive red team operations can take considerably longer.

Can a red team test be run in a production environment?

Yes, but the risks of the operation must be assessed in advance. Which techniques will be used on critical production systems must be defined clearly within the rules of engagement.

Does red teaming also test employees?

Where included in scope, phishing and other social engineering scenarios can be used.

Is MITRE ATT&CK used in red team work?

Yes. MITRE ATT&CK is one of the reference structures most widely used for modelling the techniques and tactics attackers use.

What does a red team report contain?

The report can include the attack chain, the techniques used, the systems reached, the security problems identified, the performance of the defensive systems and improvement recommendations.

Which security products does red teaming test?

The operation indirectly allows the effectiveness of SIEM, EDR, XDR, NDR, firewall, WAF, email security and SOC processes against real attacks to be assessed.

How Far Could a Real Attacker Get Inside Your Organisation?

Having security products deployed matters for a strong defence. The real question, however, is whether those systems can detect and stop an attacker during a genuine attack.

With the SecureSys red teaming service you can test your organisation's security architecture against real attacker techniques, expose the critical attack paths, and measure the defensive capacity of your SOC and security teams.

To define the scope of a red team operation tailored to your organisation and to learn more about the red teaming service, get in touch with SecureSys.