Example Reference

Intro

Red Team vs. Blue Team in Cybersecurity

Both red teams and blue teams work toward improving an organization’s security, but they do so differently. A red team plays the role of the attacker by trying to find vulnerabilities and break through cybersecurity defenses. A blue team defends against attacks and responds to incidents when they occur.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what it’s like as a cybersecurity professional on a red or blue team so you can decide which might be a better fit. We’ll also discuss some emerging roles within the cybersecurity color wheel.

Benefits of a red team vs. blue team approach

One way organizations can assess their security capabilities is to stage a red team/blue team exercise. These two teams of professionals face off to put a security infrastructure to the test in a simulation meant to mimic a real attack. Taking a red team versus blue team approach to cybersecurity can have several benefits, allowing security teams to:

Find vulnerabilities

Strengthen network security

Build experience in detecting and containing attacks

Develop response plans and procedures

Create healthy competition and cooperation

Raise security awareness among other staff

What is a red team?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines a red team as “a group of people authorized and organized to emulate a potential adversary’s attack or exploitation capabilities against an enterprise’s security posture.” The red team plays the part of the attacker or competitor with the intention of identifying vulnerabilities in a system.

Red team activities

When you’re part of a red team, you’re tasked with thinking like a hacker in order to breach an organization’s security (with their permission). Some common red team activities include:

Social engineering

Penetration testing

Intercepting communication

Card cloning

Making recommendations to blue team for security improvements

Red team skills

The offensive mindset of red team activities requires its own set of skills. If you’re interested in a red team role, building these skills could set you up for success:

Software development: When you know how applications are built, you’re better able to identify their possible weaknesses (as well as write your own programs to automate the attack process).

Penetration testing: Much of a red team’s job is to identify and try to exploit known vulnerabilities on a network. This includes familiarity with vulnerability scanners.

Social engineering: An organization’s biggest vulnerability is often its people rather than its computer network. Social engineering tactics like phishing, baiting, and tailgating can sometimes be the easiest way past security defenses.

Threat intelligence and reverse engineering: Knowing what threats are out there—and how to emulate them—can make you a more effective attacker.

Creativity: Finding ways to beat a blue team’s defenses often requires creating new and innovative forms of attack.

What is a blue team?

NIST defines a blue team as “the group responsible for defending an enterprise’s use of information systems by maintaining its security posture against a group of mock attackers.” If the red team is playing offense, the blue team is playing defense to protect an organization’s critical assets.

Blue team activities

As a blue team member, it’s your job to analyze the current security posture of your organization and take measures to address flaws and vulnerabilities. Playing for the blue team also means monitoring for breaches and responding to them when they do occur. Some of these tasks include:

Digital footprint analysis

DNS audits

Installing and configuring firewalls and endpoint security software

Monitoring network activity

Using least-privilege access

Blue team skills

Defending a company against attack involves understanding what assets need to be protected and how to best protect them. Here are some skills that could serve you well in a blue team role:

Risk assessment: Risk assessment helps you identify key assets that are most at risk for exploitation so you can prioritize your resources to protect them.

Threat intelligence: You’ll want to know what threats are out there so you can plan appropriate defenses. Blue teams have to stay a step ahead of attackers.

Hardening techniques: Recognizing weaknesses in your organization’s security is only helpful if you know the techniques for fixing them.

Monitoring and detection systems: As a blue team professional, you’ll need to know how to use packet sniffers, security and information event management (SIEM) software, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS).

Cybersecurity color wheel: Yellow, green, orange, and purple team

As the world of cybersecurity becomes more specialized, new roles are emerging beyond the red versus blue framework. You may see this referred to as the cybersecurity color wheel. Let’s take a look at some of the other colors you might encounter.

Purple team: A purple team integrates defensive and offensive tactics to promote collaboration and shared knowledge between red teams and blue teams. An effective read team/blue team interaction should naturally create a purple team.

Yellow team: The yellow team are the builders—the security architects and coders who develop security systems.

Green team: The green team takes insights from the blue team to enhance the code written by the yellow team. They may also automate blue team tasks for a more efficient defense.

Orange team: The orange team takes what they’ve learned from attackers (red team) to encourage the yellow team to be more security conscious. They teach developers to think like attackers to build better security into their code.