Because security weaknesses come in different forms to your organisation, it’s necessary to have a focused and dedicated cyber/Information security team that comprehensively searches for vulnerabilities that go beyond simple risk assessments. Your dedicated security team can include also a Red Team.
Your internal RED TEAMS are responsible for running simulated cyberattacks on your own organization. If you don't have specialized Red Teams internally then you should hire other organizations that offer Red Team services as part of contracted external security services. Yet the idea is same--That is to establish the effectiveness of the your organization’s security programs.
While Red Teams use many of the same tools and techniques used in penetration tests or “ethical hacking”, the objective of a Red Team is different. Attacks employed by Red Teams are multi-layered simulations designed to gauge how well a company’s people, networks, applications, and physical security controls can detect, alert and respond to a genuine attack. Their scope is usually larger & wide than standard pentest assignments.
During Red Team testing, highly experienced security professionals take on the guise of a real attacker and attempt to breach the organization’s cyber defenses. The attack scenarios they enact are designed to exercise various attack surfaces presented by the organization and identify gaps in preventative, detective, and response related security controls.
These attacks leverage A FULL RANGE OF TOOLS available to the most persistent attackers—whether they include social engineering and physical attack vectors, from careful crafted phishing emails to genuine attempts to breach onsite security and gain access to server rooms.
The vulnerabilities that are exposed during testing should immediately be closed by procedural means.
MAJOR BENEFITS OF RED TEAMING
1. Red teaming provides real-life security performance metrics to you. It makes it possible for you to know if your existing security posturing is doing a good job without the ramifications of a real incident. It clearly pinpoints where your organization is failing or succeeding in securing critical assets.
2. Red Teaming exercises are excellent training tools too. Your IT security people learn advanced skills which enables them to handle threats on an ongoing basis. By the time when they are confronted with ‘the real cyber attacks’ they would already have just right experience under their belts.
3. Red teaming automatically increases cybersecurity awareness among your security defense team, other employees, supervisors and staff. When they know the threat and how an adversary works via methods of operation, they clearly understand--what to be aware of. Red teams should be used not only with the security team but for anyone who has a security role, for example, receptionists and mail room operators, etc.
4. The best qualification tool around to determine if an individual is qualified to do a cybersecurity job is via red teaming. You can assign them to a seasoned mentor and shadow new security staff and ask them to be with the mentor or some othe officer on every required task or duty. It does not matter, if this task is Surveillance detection or X-ray machine operation…
5. We all know that Security Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) should be constantly modified and improved. Red teams can surely guide this process.
6. Technology Checks. Red teams may expose issues with security technology. Perhaps a magnetometer was not correctly calibrated and did not detect a knife. Red teams can reveal where the technology falls short of a solution which in turn may dictate an adjustment in procedures. How for example to deal with people in wheelchairs being screened via a metal detector.
7. Regulatory compliance is an area where red teams can play a part.
8. Every security manager can relate to the struggle to justify the allocation of security resources to them. When a threat is not realized, there is no obvious justification. However, Red Teaming can reveal the need for resources and shows too whether or not current resources are being used effectively to mitigate and prevent threat.
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I am personally of the opinion that--Red Teaming isn’t just about finding the holes in your defense. A good red team engagement must provide a playbook to improve that defense in the future. It’s important to note that conducting red team exercises only to check the performance of security functions is not enough. These tests must be followed up immediately with right adjustments, changes or right trainings. After all, the mission of red teaming is to foster security improvement and push change.
No doubt, Red Teaming is must for every medium to large sized enterprise!
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Guys, what do you think about these benefits of Red Teaming?
Kindly leave me your views in comment section.
This Article Was Written & published by Meena R, Senior Manager - IT, at Luminis Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd, India.
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