Tools and automation¶

Purple teaming benefits from tooling that scales testing and accelerates improvement.

Attack simulation tools¶

Atomic Red Team: Pre-built tests for MITRE ATT&CK techniques. Easy to run, good for continuous validation.

Caldera: Automated adversary emulation. Chains techniques together, adapts to defences.

Infection Monkey: Network security testing. Simulates lateral movement and data exfiltration.

Metasploit/Cobalt Strike: Full-featured attack frameworks for sophisticated testing. Also see Cobaltstrike: Interoperability with the Metasploit Framework. And pricing is high!

SIGMA rules: Platform-agnostic detection rules convertible to SIEM-specific formats.

Detection engineering tooling: Version control for detection rules, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines.

Purple Team Automation (PurpleSharp): Simulates adversary TTPs and validates detection coverage.

VECTR: Purple team management platform tracking exercises, findings, and improvements.

Centralised logging: Essential foundation. Can’t detect what you don’t log.

Log enrichment: Context that makes logs useful (user info, asset data, threat intelligence).

Correlation engines: Detect multi-stage attacks spanning multiple systems and time periods.

Alert management: Incident tracking, workflow management, case documentation.

Continuous validation: Scheduled automated tests verify detections still work after changes.

Detection deployment: Automatically deploy new detection rules across environments.

Alert enrichment: Automated context gathering when alerts fire (user history, asset risk, threat intel).

Response orchestration: SOAR platforms execute common response actions automatically.

Start with purpose: What problem are you solving? Don’t buy tools looking for problems.

Integration requirements: Must work with existing SIEM, EDR (mere examples), and security stack.

Skill requirements: Do you have expertise to operate and maintain tool?

Cost vs. value: Expensive tools sitting unused provide no value.