Red Teaming 101: the benefits of employing red teaming as a cybersecurity tactic.

Red teaming is a powerful cybersecurity tactic

If you were a bank robber, which kind of banks would you rob? Probably not the bank with a 24-hour police presence on its premises. And most certainly not the banks with an army of armed guards, bollards, and security cameras at every entrance.

In cybersecurity, we call that vulnerability analysis. It's where we ask ourselves: "If I were a cybercriminal, what would I attack?" The answer to that question is called the attack surface: the sum of all potential vulnerabilities in a system.

Red teaming is the practice of using a "fake" attacker to test the security of a business. The attacker will attempt to gain entry into the company's confidential files and databases, using whatever means necessary. The goal of this exercise is to find any weaknesses in their system, which can then be fixed.

The Sugar Security Suite uses these methods to determine how easy it would be for someone without authorization to access your site's data, including customer information or other proprietary material.

Advantages of red teaming

Security is a process, not a checklist, and your company needs to be prepared to adapt to a constantly evolving threat landscape.

There are several advantages of red teaming on an organization. Here are the top five reasons you should consider adding red teaming to your security arsenal:

1. Preemptive Preparation

2. Test Security Team Controls and Processes

3. Gain Visibility into System Weaknesses

4. Prioritize Security Resources for Maximum Impact

5. Understand Real World Risks

Steps to set up red teaming

First, find a project that you need to get an in-depth analysis with. If you don't have an in-house red team, there are plenty on the market to choose from depending on your budget. Then, set up questions you need to know, scope out what's inline, it's always good to discuss what's in-scope and proper access.

The Sugar Security suite is a specialized tool that was created for Red Teams and performs Attack Simulations. We provide expert consultation along with our automated tool to give you real advice and recommendations.

We designed this red team tool to solve a problem. That problem is the lack of red teaming available that is cost-effective. Truly, you can never know if you're ready for an attack, but the Sugar Security Suite is designed to keep you up to date daily/weekly/monthly, which you choose.

We have clients in a variety of industries, including tech startups, financial services, healthcare, gaming. We perform Red Team engagements across the US and abroad.

Comparison between Red Team and traditional pentesting

While traditional pentesting focuses on finding as many vulnerabilities as possible, red teaming is about looking for one vulnerability that will lead you to the ultimate goal. This one vulnerability might be something that is overlooked by regular pentesters or may only be exploitable under certain conditions.

The point of red teaming is to mimic a real attack in order to test a company's security.

Traditional pentesting looks for any weakness it can find, but red teaming focuses on finding one weakness that can be exploited to gain access and reach the final goal.

So really think about your need and see which of the two aligns more with what the goals are.

Summary

At the end of it all, neither penetration testing nor Red Teaming is "superior". The choice should heavily be made specific to the goal and info you wish to collect. They both have situations they do very well in. When it comes down to in-depth and detailed exploration, with a wider net, penetration testing may be the best option. But, for incident response and specific vulnerabilities, across any vector, Red Teaming is best, without question.

If you would like to discuss whether Penetration Testing or Red Team Testing is the best choice for your organization, or simply wish to learn more, please contact us!