How Red Teaming Can Help Significantly Reduce Your Organization's Attack Surface
At the heart of red teaming is the idea that, by taking on mindset of an attacker, security teams can simulate more realistic assessments to identify real-world threats for organizations to remediate. Red teams attempt to push the limits of an organization’s defenses, uncovering weaknesses that might otherwise go unnoticed. The ultimate goal of red teaming is to adopt the adversary’s perspective as best as possible, uncovering threats, so organizations can be ready for whatever comes their way.
Definition of Red Teaming
Red teaming is a cybersecurity practice where a dedicated team of ethical hackers, or “pentesters”, known as the red team, simulate real-world attacks to assess an organization’s security. Unlike traditional penetration testing, red teaming is broader in scope, involving creative and persistent efforts to mimic actual adversaries. The goal is to identify vulnerabilities, test response capabilities, and provide recommendations to improve overall security.
The Red Teaming Process
The red teaming process begins with a strategic planning phase, ensuring that all activities align with the organization’s risk management and security objectives. During this stage, red team leaders collaborate with key stakeholders—including security leadership, IT teams, and risk management personnel—to define clear goals.
Objectives might include:
- Evaluating the security posture of high-value systems, such as financial databases, customer portals, or cloud infrastructure.
- Testing employee awareness and susceptibility to social engineering attacks.
- Assessing the effectiveness of incident response procedures under a realistic cyberattack scenario.
For example, if an organization has recently implemented a zero-trust architecture, the red team may focus on testing whether unauthorized lateral movement is possible within the network. Clearly defined objectives ensure that the red team’s operations provide valuable insights and actionable outcomes.
Once objectives are set, the red team conducts extensive reconnaissance to gather intelligence on the target organization. This step is crucial for identifying weaknesses before launching an attack.
Common reconnaissance activities include:
- Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) Gathering: Using tools like Shodan, theHarvester, and search engine dorking to uncover exposed assets, leaked credentials, or sensitive corporate data.
- Network Mapping: Identifying external infrastructure, such as publicly accessible web servers, VPN gateways, or cloud environments.
- Social Engineering Research: Analyzing employee information from LinkedIn and social media to craft highly targeted phishing campaigns.
Reconnaissance findings directly influence the attack strategy. If the team identifies an outdated VPN appliance with a known vulnerability, it may become the primary entry point for the attack.
With reconnaissance complete, the red team launches a full-scale attack, moving through the complete intrusion lifecycle—from breaching defenses to maintaining long-term access. This step integrates exploitation, privilege escalation, and persistence into a continuous simulation, testing how well the organization can detect and respond to an advanced adversary.
The execution phase consists of:
- Gaining Initial Access – The red team breaches the environment using tactics such as phishing, exploiting software vulnerabilities, or bypassing authentication mechanisms. This step mirrors how real-world attackers infiltrate an organization’s systems.
- Escalating Privileges and Expanding Access – Once inside, the red team works to increase control by extracting credentials, exploiting misconfigured permissions, or leveraging privilege escalation attacks like pass-the-hash. This allows them to move laterally across systems undetected.
- Establishing Persistence – To simulate long-term compromise, the red team installs backdoors, creates rogue accounts, or disables security controls to ensure continued access even if initial entry points are closed.
By executing these steps in a coordinated attack, the red team provides a comprehensive assessment of the organization’s ability to detect, respond to, and recover from a sophisticated cyber threat.
The final step involves compiling a comprehensive report that details every stage of the engagement, from reconnaissance findings to successful exploits and security gaps. This report is designed to provide actionable insights rather than just a list of weaknesses.
A well-structured red team report typically includes:
- Overview of the Attack Path: A step-by-step breakdown of how initial access was gained, how the attack progressed, and what critical assets were compromised.
- Identified Weaknesses: A categorized list of vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and security gaps, ranked by risk severity.
- Recommendations: Specific remediation steps, such as implementing multi-factor authentication, restricting administrative privileges, or improving security awareness training.
- Re-Testing Plans: Proposals for follow-up assessments to verify whether vulnerabilities have been effectively remediated.
The reporting phase ensures that red team findings translate into meaningful improvements, strengthening the organization’s overall security posture.
Following the attack execution, the red team and key stakeholders engage in a structured review to assess:
- Which security controls failed to detect or prevent the attack.
- How quickly the blue team identified and responded to the threat.
- What gaps exist in policies, security tools, and incident response processes.
This phase allows for an open discussion on defense effectiveness, enabling security teams to prioritize improvements before formal reporting.
Key Steps to Implement Red Teaming
Implementing a red teaming strategy that effectively evaluates defenses, identifies vulnerabilities, and improves incident response capabilities requires several steps and key recommendations, some of which are listed below.
- Define Objectives and Scope: Clearly articulate the goals of the red team exercise, such as testing specific systems, evaluating employee awareness, or assessing overall security measures. Additionally, establishing the scope to focus on critical areas without disrupting essential operations is important for obvious reasons.
- Assemble a Skilled Team: Form a team of pentesters experienced in employing the adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures that you want conducted as a part of the exercise. Make sure team members possess relevant certifications, such as Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) or Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH).
- Engage External Experts: Consider involving external specialists like TrollEye Security to enhance the effectiveness of the exercise.
- Develop Rules of Engagement: Set clear guidelines outlining acceptable methods, targets, and boundaries to prevent unintended consequences during simulations.
- Conduct Reconnaissance: Gather intelligence on the organization’s systems, networks, and potential vulnerabilities to inform attack strategies.
- Integrate Threat Intelligence – Leverage real-world threat intelligence to align red team operations with emerging attack trends, adversary tactics, and industry-specific threats, ensuring a more realistic and impactful exercise.
- Comprehensive Debriefing: Hold debriefing sessions post-exercise to discuss findings, recommendations, and strategies for improvement in detail.
- Implement Findings: Apply the lessons learned to strengthen security policies, procedures, and technologies.
- Continuous Improvement: Regularly schedule red team exercises to keep pace with changing threats and to constantly enhance security practices.
While not an exhaustive list, organizations can use the steps listed above to start the process of implementing an effective red teaming strategy. Helping them to identify vulnerabilities and bolster their defenses against cyber threats.
