How Purple Teaming Helps You Remediate More Vulnerabilities and Increase Collaboration
In cybersecurity, the best lessons often come from the adversary’s playbook. Every breach, every exploit, and every innovative attack tactic reveals a new vulnerability or oversight to address. By understanding attackers strategies and processes your team can gain invaluable insight, and build stronger security measures.
The best way to accomplish this is through purple teaming, which is a strategy takes this concept to the next level by creating a collaborative space where red and blue teams work hand-in-hand to strengthen an organization’s defenses. It’s not about competition but synergy, aligning red and blue team efforts to outsmart even the most advanced cyber threats. By combining the red team’s ability to think like attackers with the blue team’s expertise in protecting critical systems, purple teaming fosters innovation and adaptability in security strategies.
This approach ensures that every simulated attack becomes an opportunity to learn, refine, and build a defense that is as dynamic as the threats it counters. In fact, according to a PlexTrac survey, a full 88% of those who use purple teaming feel that their cyber defenses improved after conducting it, as opposed to only 52% who said the same after a pen test, so it’s absolutely a strategy you should be thinking about implementing.
Definition of Purple Teaming
Purple teaming is a cybersecurity methodology that emphasizes collaboration between red teams (offensive security experts) and blue teams (defensive security professionals). Unlike traditional engagements where these teams operate independently, purple teaming encourages continuous communication and knowledge-sharing throughout the process. The goal is to align the offensive tactics of the red team with the defensive strategies of the blue team, creating a unified approach to identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities. Blue teams gain an understanding of different attack strategies from the red teams, and red teams are able to refine their attack strategies due to constant feedback from the blue team.
The Purple Teaming Process
The purple teaming process is designed to combine the offensive capabilities of the red team with the defensive expertise of the blue team. Understanding each step of this process is essential to implementing purple teaming effectively.
The first step in purple teaming is establishing a structured plan with well-defined objectives. These objectives should be tailored to the organization’s security priorities and risk profile. Common goals include evaluating the effectiveness of detection and response mechanisms, simulating specific cyber threats relevant to the industry, or identifying security control gaps.
To ensure a productive engagement, this phase requires input from multiple stakeholders, including security leadership, red team operators, blue team defenders, and, in some cases, compliance or risk management teams. The plan should define:
- The scope of the assessment (e.g., targeting cloud infrastructure, endpoints, or network perimeters).
- Key attack scenarios to be tested, such as ransomware deployment, credential theft, or lateral movement.
- Success criteria for the exercise, ensuring that results can be measured and analyzed effectively.
Additionally, both teams must align on the communication protocols, level of transparency, and rules of engagement to ensure a controlled and effective assessment.
With a solid plan in place, the red team begins crafting attack scenarios that closely mimic real-world threats. These scenarios are built using intelligence-driven methodologies, leveraging knowledge of known threat actors and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
This stage involves:
- Threat modeling: Identifying attack paths based on the organization’s vulnerabilities and likely targets.
- Payload development: Crafting exploits, phishing lures, or custom malware to test security controls.
- Adversary simulation: Executing attack chains that replicate advanced persistent threat (APT) behavior, insider threats, or supply chain attacks.
Importantly, the attack phase is not a traditional “red team vs. blue team” engagement. Instead of operating covertly, the red team collaborates with the blue team, ensuring that each attack provides immediate learning opportunities rather than just post-exercise findings.
The execution phase is where the red team actively performs its simulated attacks, while the blue team monitors, detects, and responds. Unlike traditional penetration testing or red teaming engagements, purple teaming prioritizes open communication between both teams.
Key aspects of the execution phase include:
- Live monitoring and response: The blue team actively observes the red team’s attack in real-time, analyzing log data, alerts, and behavioral indicators.
- Real-time feedback loops: The red team shares insights into their attack techniques, and the blue team provides immediate responses, adjusting defenses dynamically.
- Attack variation and adaptability: Based on blue team reactions, red team operators may pivot and escalate attacks to test additional detection and response capabilities.
This cooperative approach allows defenders to gain firsthand experience handling real-world attack scenarios while security tools and workflows are tested under pressure.
Once the engagement is complete, both teams come together to analyze the results. The post-engagement review is critical for extracting meaningful lessons and improving security posture.
The analysis phase includes:
- Breakdown of attack vectors: Reviewing which exploits were successful, how they bypassed defenses, and what security gaps were exposed.
- Effectiveness of detection and response: Identifying which alerts were triggered, how quickly threats were detected, and whether incident response actions were effective.
- Strengths and weaknesses assessment: Documenting both successful defenses and areas where detection or response capabilities failed.
This phase fosters a constructive learning environment where both teams can refine their tactics based on real-world insights.
The findings from the analysis phase drive targeted improvements in security controls, processes, and personnel training. Organizations should implement remediation measures based on the vulnerabilities and gaps identified.
Key areas of improvement may include:
- Security tool enhancements: Upgrading endpoint detection and response (EDR), SIEM, and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to improve threat visibility.
- Incident response refinements: Modifying playbooks, improving escalation procedures, or introducing automated response actions.
- Policy and access control adjustments: Strengthening authentication methods, enforcing least privilege access, or segmenting networks to limit attack impact.
- Ongoing security training: Providing both offensive and defensive teams with updated training on emerging threats and countermeasures.
Improvements should be prioritized based on risk impact, ensuring that the most critical gaps are addressed first.
Cyber threats constantly evolve, and a single purple team engagement is not enough to maintain strong defenses. Organizations must repeat the process at regular intervals, using each iteration to validate previous improvements and adapt to new attack techniques.
Regular purple teaming ensures:
- Continuous validation of security controls: Confirming that patches, tool upgrades, and policy changes effectively mitigate past weaknesses.
- Adaptability to emerging threats: Testing against new adversary TTPs to stay ahead of evolving attack methods.
- Incremental improvement over time: Refining security posture with each iteration, ensuring long-term resilience.
By embedding purple teaming as an ongoing security practice rather than a one-time exercise, organizations can stay proactive in detecting, responding to, and mitigating cyber threats.
How to Implement Purple Teaming
Purple teaming requires a well-structured strategy to foster collaboration and improve cybersecurity outcomes. Organizations can implement purple teaming effectively by focusing on these core elements:
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Adopt the Right Technology – The foundation of successful purple teaming relies on using tools that enable communication and collaboration between both teams. A platform that has a collaborative dashboard where both red and blue teams can access and use the same information, exchange insights, and ultimately improve defenses is ideal.
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Integrate Purple Teaming into Security Workflows – Purple teaming doesn’t do much if you only do it once, to achieve sustained benefits, purple teaming must become an integral part of your security operations. Regularly scheduled exercises help maintain an up-to-date security posture, and establishing metrics to measure improvement can identify areas needing further development.
- Use Real-Time Feedback – Real-time feedback during simulations is a cornerstone of purple teaming. Your team can use this information to address vulnerabilities as they arise, optimizing defenses during each and every exercise.
How CyberOptix Helps
CyberOptix is built for true purple teaming, enabling red and blue teams to work together seamlessly. Offensive teams can simulate real-world attacks—leveraging stolen credentials, exploiting misconfigurations, and testing security controls—while defensive teams use the same platform to detect, analyze, and remediate security gaps and attack vectors in real time. By integrating these functions into a single platform, CyberOptix improves collaboration, accelerates remediation, and lowers cost, so your ready for whatever comes your way.
Start Implementing Purple Teaming Today
With 75% of organizations who have conducted purple teaming either planning to budget for, or having already budgeted for future purple teaming engagements, its clear that it is an effective solution. If you want to break down silos between offensive and defensive teams, and reduce vulnerabilities while your at it, its time to start purple teaming. And by using tools like CyberOptix, implementing purple teaming is not just feasible but easier than ever before.
