Building red team capability¶

Organisations don’t need elite hackers on day one. Red team capabilities mature over time. Begin here and use red and blue capability building later.

Starting point¶

Begin with Atomic Red Team or similar frameworks: Run pre-built attack simulations to test detection capabilities. No custom exploit development required.

Focus on common attack paths: Test the things attackers actually do: phishing, credential abuse, lateral movement with stolen credentials, privilege escalation through misconfigurations.

Partner with purple team: Start with collaborative exercises where blue team knows attacks are coming and red team shares techniques in real-time.

Developing capabilities¶

Learn from threat intelligence: Study real adversary TTPs and replicate them in your environment.

Build custom tooling: Develop organisation-specific attack simulations that test your unique environment and defences.

Expand scope: Progress from pure technical testing to include social engineering, physical access, and supply chain attack simulations.

Increase operational security: Evolve from noisy, obvious tests to stealthy operations that test realistic adversary tradecraft.

Advanced operations¶

Full adversary emulation: Replicate specific threat actors end-to-end, from reconnaissance through impact.

Assumed breach scenarios: Start with access and test detection, response, and recovery under realistic compromise conditions.

Purple team automation: Continuous adversary simulation with automated red team testing and blue team tuning.

Purple team as a service: Mature organisations develop internal purple team capabilities that continuously challenge and improve security posture.