Red Team Testing

Your organization has made a significant investment in cybersecurity controls, and it’s important to know if those controls are working. Red team testing puts your defenses to the test with mock attacks, either from ethical hackers, or from automated solutions that constantly test your controls.

How Can Flare Help with Red Team Testing?

Can automation help with red team exercises? 

Automated red teaming, or CART (Continuous Automated Red Teaming), uses digital tools to automate testing, simulating continuous attacks on an organization’s attack surface. By continuously attacking your defenses, automated red teaming is able to test several vulnerabilities at once, and give your team a complete, ongoing picture of your organization’s cyberdefenses.

How can monitoring your attack surface help with red team testing? 

Your attack surface is always growing and changing, creating new vectors for attack. By monitoring your attack surface continuously, your team gains constant visibility into your attack surface. Constant visibility into your evolving attack surface is critical when it comes to protecting your organization and testing your defenses. Automated attack surface monitoring provides constant visibility into your organization’s vulnerabilities, weaknesses, data leaks, and the misconfigurations that emerge in your external attack surface.

What do you get with Flare’s Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution? 

• Automated continuous monitoring of your attack surface: An automated solution gives you 24/7 coverage of your asserts, so your team will know as soon as there’s a threat to your organization. 
• Relevant notifications: Flare cuts through the noise, sending alerts only when it finds your organization’s assets (such as your name, employees’ names, domains, IP, or any other key data) where they should not be. 
• Proactive cybersecurity: By scanning for potential threats, you can catch breaches early and take steps to protect your data, systems, and networks.

An Overview of Red Team Testing

What is red team testing? 

Red team testing is the process of bringing in ethical hackers to test your organization’s cyber defenses. The red team simulates an attack on your organization using the tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs)  that real criminals use. The goal of red team testing is to improve your organization’s cybersecurity by finding weak spots in your cyber defenses and showing which security controls worked. 

What are the benefits of red team testing?

Red team testing provides a range of benefits for an organization:  

• An enhanced security posture
• Improved incident response
• Proactive identification of zero-day vulnerabilities
• Better regulatory compliance
• Continuous improvement of your cybersecurity stance
• Hands-on training for your security teams

What are the challenges with traditional red team exercises? 

There are, however,  several difficulties associated with traditional, manual red teaming: 

• Traditional red team exercises and time consuming and require much manual effort
• Because tests are performed periodically (annually, for example) they only show your cybersecurity posture at a single point in time
• Hiring a red team is expensive
• The manual effort involved makes traditional red teaming difficult to scale

What is the difference between red teaming and pen testing? 

Red teaming and penetration — or pen — testing are similar in some ways. They’re both used to find and remediate security risks and vulnerabilities. However, they are not the same. Red teaming is broader in scope, testing for many different kinds of vulnerabilities using complex attack methodologies. Pen testing is more targeted, exploiting vulnerabilities that are already known and testing those weak points. 

Why is Red Team Testing Especially Relevant Now?

Why do you need red teaming in today’s cybersecurity landscape?

Knowing the threats to your organization is an important part of a strong cybersecurity strategy, but threats are constantly changing, and your team doesn’t necessarily know where all your vulnerabilities are. Red team testing provides a proactive and comprehensive approach to your organization’s cybersecurity, helping you shore up your defenses before an attack. 

Should my organization conduct a red teaming exercise?

While red team testing can be beneficial to organizations of all sizes, traditional red-teaming may not be the best fit for your organization’s security needs and objectives. There are several factors that should be taken into consideration when deciding whether to conduct a red team test, including your company’s: 

• Industry: The consequences of a breach in certain industries, such as energy or healthcare, may have a greater impact on human life and safety. It may be more beneficial for those businesses to conduct regular red team testing. 
• Compliance requirements: Highly regulated industries may require red teaming to meet requirements, 
• Existing security controls: For businesses with a mature cybersecurity function, red teaming may not be as necessary as for a smaller organization with less of an awareness of their potential vulnerabilities. 
• The number of threats your company faces: If your organization is attacked consistently, a red teaming exercise may help to identify gaps in your security and offer recommendations to remediate those vulnerabilities. 
• Security budget: Traditional red team tests can be expensive. If your business does not have the budget, your team may need to invest in automated red teaming. 

What are the elements of successful red team testing? 

Successful red team tests include a few common elements: 

• A well-defined set of goals and objectives for the testing, including a clear roadmap of the core initiatives for the team.
• Rules of engagement for the test, including specific areas to test, what to test, and which tools and methods will be used. 
• A successful red team test should simulate realistic attacks that are relevant to the organization being tested.
• A  comprehensive report of the test and any findings about  areas of improvement for the organization’s policies, security controls, and incident responses. 

Red Team Testing and Flare

Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. Flare monitors your attack surface for vulnerabilities so that your team can mitigate them as soon as possible. 

Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. Learn more by signing up for our free trial.