Red Team
Engagements
Goal-oriented adversary simulation where we use real attacker techniques to test your organization's ability to detect, respond to, and contain a breach.
Unlike penetration testing that focuses on finding vulnerabilities and exploiting them, red teaming tests whether your security program, people, process, and technology can stop a determined attacker.
What is a red team engagement?
A red team engagement is a full-scope, multi-vector security assessment where we simulate a real-world attacker attempting to achieve specific objectives, such as accessing sensitive data, compromising critical systems, or establishing persistent access.
We use any means necessary within agreed rules: social engineering, phishing, physical access attempts, network exploitation, cloud misconfigurations, supply chain attacks, and insider threat simulation. The goal isn't just to find vulnerabilities, but to test whether your security operations center (SOC), incident response team, and defensive controls can detect and stop us.
Red Team Tests
- → Detection capability (can you see us?)
- → Response effectiveness (can you stop us?)
- → Security controls under real attack
- → SOC alerting and triage
- → Incident response procedures
- → Defense-in-depth effectiveness
- → Employee security awareness
Common Objectives
- → Access customer database
- → Compromise domain admin
- → Exfiltrate sensitive documents
- → Establish persistent backdoor
- → Access production environment
- → Compromise executive accounts
- → Move laterally to crown jewels
Red team vs. penetration testing
Both are valuable, but they serve different purposes. Here's when you need each.
| Aspect | Penetration Testing | Red Team Engagement |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Find and exploit vulnerabilities | Test detection and response capabilities |
| Scope | Specific systems or applications | Entire organization (multi-vector) |
| Approach | Comprehensive vulnerability assessment | Goal-oriented, stealthy simulation |
| Stealth | Not a priority-loud is fine | Critical, avoid detection as long as possible |
| Techniques | Technical exploitation only | Social engineering, physical, technical |
| SOC Involvement | Usually informed beforehand | Usually, only upper level management involved |
| Duration | 1-3 weeks | 4-12 weeks (duration based on size of organization and missions) |
| Best For | Finding vulnerabilities, compliance | Testing security operations maturity |
When to choose red teaming:
You already know you have vulnerabilities. Now you need to know if your security team can detect and stop an attacker who's exploiting them. Red teaming is for mature security programs that want to validate their investment in detection, response, and prevention.
Why organizations invest in red team engagements
Red teaming is expensive and intensive. Companies pursue it when they need to prove their security program works under realistic attack conditions.
Test detection capabilities
You've invested in SIEM, EDR, and SOC analysts. Red teaming proves whether those tools and people can actually detect a real attacker moving through your environment. Most organizations discover significant blind spots.
Validate incident response
Your IR playbook looks great on paper. But does your team execute it under pressure? Red teaming stress-tests response procedures, communication, containment, and decision-making during an active breach scenario.
Demonstrate security maturity
Enterprise customers, regulators, and acquirers want proof your security program is sophisticated. A red team engagement (and surviving it) demonstrates you operate at a higher level than competitors.
Prepare for sophisticated threats
State-sponsored actors and organized cybercrime groups use advanced techniques. Red teaming simulates these adversaries to prepare your team for attacks that automated tools won't catch.
Find defense gaps before attackers do
Even with good security controls, attackers find creative paths to their objectives. Red teaming reveals where your defense-in-depth strategy has exploitable weaknesses.
Train security and IT teams
Your team learns more from responding to a realistic attack than from any classroom training. Red teaming provides hands-on experience detecting, analyzing, and containing threats.
How a red team engagement works
Red teaming follows a structured process that mirrors real attacker behavior: reconnaissance, initial access, privilege escalation, lateral movement, and objective completion.
01
Initial Contact & Discovery
First conversation with security leadership to clarify your threat model, detection maturity, budget, and what you’re trying to prove before we dive into rules of engagement.
Output: Shared understanding of objectives, constraints, and whether a red team is the right move.
02
Planning & Rules of Engagement
Define objectives (e.g., 'access customer database' or 'compromise CEO email'), establish boundaries, identify critical systems that are off-limits, and coordinate emergency contacts. We also define how the blue team (defenders) will be notified if we achieve critical objectives.
Output: Signed engagement agreement with clear objectives, scope, and safety controls
03
Reconnaissance (OSINT)
Gather intelligence about your organization using only publicly available information: employee names, email formats, technologies in use, third-party services, leaked credentials, exposed infrastructure. This is passive—you won't detect this phase.
Output: Intelligence dossier showing external attack surface
04
Initial Access
Attempt to gain a foothold using phishing campaigns, social engineering, exposed services, supply chain compromise, or physical access. We use techniques real attackers employ: credential stuffing, spear-phishing, watering hole attacks, or exploiting unpatched external systems.
Output: Documentation of initial access vectors attempted and succeeded
05
Privilege Escalation
Once inside, we escalate from limited user access to privileged accounts. This includes exploiting misconfigurations, stolen credentials, insecure service accounts, or vulnerable applications. We validate whether your least-privilege principles actually work.
Output: Attack path showing escalation from user to admin
06
Lateral Movement
Move across your environment toward the objective: from workstation to server, from DMZ to internal network, from dev to production. We test network segmentation, monitoring, and whether your EDR/XDR detects lateral movement techniques.
Output: Network map showing compromise path and detection gaps
07
Persistence & Stealth
Establish backdoors and maintain access while avoiding detection. We test whether your SOC notices: suspicious processes, unusual network traffic, credential abuse, or anomalous behavior. This phase often reveals detection blind spots.
Output: Log analysis showing what was/wasn't detected
08
Objective Completion
Achieve the defined goal: access sensitive data, compromise critical systems, or demonstrate impact. We document proof of compromise (screenshots, file hashes, timestamps) without causing actual damage or data exfiltration.
Output: Evidence package proving objective achievement
09
Detection & Response Testing
At key moments, we intentionally trigger alerts or let the blue team discover us to test response procedures. How fast do they detect? How effectively do they contain? Do they follow IR playbooks? Can they eradicate our access?
Output: Response timeline and effectiveness analysis
10
Reporting & Debrief
Deliver a comprehensive report documenting: attack paths, techniques used, detection gaps, response effectiveness, and detailed remediation recommendations. We conduct a full debrief with security, IT, and leadership teams.
Output: Executive and technical reports, plus debrief session
11
Remediation & Retest (optional)
After you've addressed findings, we can retest critical paths to confirm remediation. This validates that controls now prevent or detect the techniques we used successfully.
Output: Retest report confirming remediation effectiveness
Techniques we use
Red teams use the same tools and techniques as real attackers. Here's what's typically in scope (with your permission).
Social Engineering
- →Spear-phishing campaigns
- →Pretexting phone calls
- →LinkedIn reconnaissance
Technical Exploitation
- →Network vulnerability exploitation
- →Web application attacks
- →API security bypasses
- →Cloud misconfigurations
- →Zero-day research (if applicable)
- →Supply chain compromise
Credential Attacks
- →Password spraying
- →Credential stuffing
- →Phishing for credentials
- →Kerberoasting
- →Pass-the-hash attacks
- →Token theft and replay
Persistence Mechanisms
- →Backdoor implants
- →Web shell deployment
- →Scheduled task creation
- →Registry modifications
- →Service account compromise
- →Cloud persistence (IAM keys)
Lateral Movement
- →SMB and RDP exploitation
- →WMI and PowerShell remoting
- →Stolen credential reuse
- →Pass-the-ticket attacks
- →Service exploitation
- →Pivoting through compromised hosts
Data Access
- →Database credential theft
- →File share enumeration
- →Cloud storage access
- →Email/document access
- →Source code repository access
What you receive
Red team engagements produce comprehensive documentation showing exactly how we compromised your environment and what your team needs to improve.
Executive Report
- High-level summary of objectives achieved
- Timeline of compromise
- Business impact assessment
- Detection and response effectiveness
- Strategic recommendations
- Risk prioritization
Technical Report
- Detailed attack path documentation
- Tools and techniques used (MITRE ATT&CK mapping)
- Proof-of-concept evidence
- Network diagrams showing lateral movement
- Detection gap analysis
- Technical remediation guidance
Detection Analysis
- What your SOC detected (and when)
- What went undetected
- Alert fatigue and false positives
- SIEM/EDR effectiveness assessment
- Logging and visibility gaps
- Recommendations for detection improvements
Response Evaluation
- Incident response timeline
- Communication effectiveness
- Containment and eradication actions
- Playbook adherence
- Decision-making under pressure
- Team coordination and escalation
Full Debrief Session
We conduct a comprehensive debrief with your security team, IT leadership, and executives. This includes walking through the attack timeline, answering questions, discussing lessons learned, and helping prioritize remediation efforts. Most teams find this session invaluable for understanding what happened and why.
Is red teaming right for your organization?
Red team engagements aren't for everyone. Here's who benefits most.
Good fit for red teaming
- → You have a SOC or security team in place
- → You've already done penetration testing many times
- → You have SIEM, EDR/XDR, or logging infrastructure
- → You want to validate incident response procedures
- → You face sophisticated threat actors
- → You need to demonstrate security maturity
- → You're in regulated industries (finance, healthcare)
- → You have executive buy-in and budget
Start with penetration testing instead
- → You've never had a security assessment
- → You don't have dedicated security staff
- → You need compliance checkbox testing (SOC 2, ISO)
- → Your priority is finding vulnerabilities, not testing detection
- → You don't have monitoring or logging infrastructure
- → Budget is under $30,000 for security testing
- → You need results quickly (under 4 weeks)
- → Leadership isn't prepared for realistic attack simulation
Honest recommendation:
Most organizations should start with penetration testing to find and fix vulnerabilities, then progress to red teaming once they have baseline security controls and monitoring in place. Red teaming is most valuable when you're ready to prove your security program works, not when you're still building it.
Red team engagement questions
Still have questions about red team engagements? Schedule a discovery call
Ready to test your defenses?
Let's discuss your security objectives, define realistic scenarios, and scope an engagement that validates whether your security program can stop a determined attacker.
We'll start with a confidential conversation about your security posture, threat model, and what you're trying to prove. No commitment required.
Red Team Deliverables
- Full attack path documentation
- Detection and response analysis
- MITRE ATT&CK technique mapping
- Executive and technical reports
- Comprehensive debrief session
- Remediation guidance