Red Teaming in cybersecurity is an assessment where ethical hackers emulate real-world attackers’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) on an organization’s infrastructure. Unlike traditional Vulnerability Scanning or Penetration Testing, which focuses on specific vulnerabilities, a Red Team assessment takes a holistic approach, aiming to compromise the organization’s security posture. This was devised as hackers aren’t looking for all the vulnerabilities, but the one avenue that allows them to pivot ‘in’ and is undeterred till they find this avenue – whether through a phone call to the help desk, social engineering to gain access from the finance team, exploiting an endpoint to gain higher privileges, or inserting a backdoor in the git repository.

Red Team assessments are focused, goal-oriented, and one of the few security tests that mimic the real world by conducting realistic cyberattacks on business-critical workflows and risks. It assesses procedures, people, and products together to evaluate their collective effectiveness. These tests are typically performed in a ‘low and slow’ manner to avoid easily triggering alerts, making them more expensive than regular penetration tests.

Furthermore, the Red Team’s primary objective is to leverage available intelligence, uncover vulnerabilities and weaknesses, create an attack path, and possibly go undetected by conventional security testing methods. This assessment provides organizations with a more accurate evaluation of their overall security posture by assessing their susceptibility to a breach. Thus highlighting true areas where additional security controls are required.