Red Teaming vs. Pen Testing – What’s the Difference?

The threat landscape is more complex than ever before. Although many organizations have increased their budgets for cybersecurity initiatives, they are also facing higher volumes of threats along with more sophisticated attacks. One of the most useful ways to combat these challenges is through practical cybersecurity measures such as red teaming and pen testing.

While there can be some overlap and similarities between red teamers and pen testers, there is naturally some confusion surrounding the differences between their key skill sets. In this post, we’ll cover what red teaming and pen testing are and how these roles differ from each other. We’ll also cover how you can decide which role is right for your business in order to strengthen your incident response programs and security posture more effectively. 

What are Red Teaming and Pen Testing?

Cybersecurity techniques such as red teaming and pen testing can be beneficial to organizations. These methods are often viewed as similar to each other since they can both be used to identify and mitigate security risks and vulnerabilities. While they do have a common goal of helping companies better understand their threat exposure, red teaming is often more sophisticated than pen testing. To better define them, below is a breakdown of both red teaming and pen testing. 

What is Red Teaming?

Red teaming is a threat evaluation that organizations conduct to test their security infrastructure and stability. Red teaming often involves using highly skilled experts that conduct their analysis of your system by stimulating a real-world attack from the adversarial perspective.

By using various techniques and tools, such as social engineering tactics, phishing emails, and other intrusion methods, this threat intelligence allows you to better understand your exposure and vulnerabilities in order to protect them more effectively. The primary goal of red teaming is to test and analyze the real risks and threats to your organization.

What is Pen Testing?

Pen testing is a technical evaluation of an organization’s security measures. It involves simulating an attack on the company’s systems, with the goal of identifying vulnerabilities and helping you to fix them. Pen testing is often more specific in testing the weaknesses behind some of your web and system applications.

For example, conducting a pen test against your system can help you understand where your vulnerabilities and exploits are in order to correct them. Pen testing can be beneficial to see where other tools, such as automated vulnerability scanning, may still be exposing your system to threats. 

Key Differences: Red Teaming vs. Pen Testing

Red teaming and pen testing are both highly beneficial tools for assessing the security of your organization. Each of these approaches can be used to test the effectiveness of your current defenses, identify weaknesses in those defenses, and help you develop strategies for improving them. While they can increase your security posture for the better, below are three core differences between these methods of testing for vulnerabilities. 

1. Scope

One of the key differences between red teaming and pen testing often involves the scope of the assessment. The type of scope of red teaming often involves being more broad and strategic in the testing scope. Red teaming essentially focuses on the greater organizational infrastructure or a section of the company’s system and network. The scope goal of red teaming will look from an attacker’s perspective at how your organization can be attacked and what would happen in the event that the attack were successful. 

On the other hand, pen testing is often more tactical in methodology since it focuses on specific sectors of your organization’s network or system. Conducting a pen test against your system can generally employ a variety of techniques to identify vulnerabilities and exploit them. This assessment is done with the goal of focusing on specific web applications or programs that can be exploited before an attacker can breach them. 

2. Test Complexity

When it comes to assessments, red teaming, and pen testing have a few key differences between the testing being conducted. For instance, pen testing can often be a quicker testing process for organizations to conduct than a red teaming type of test, depending on the scope. While both assessment options focus on identifying vulnerabilities and providing remediation, red teaming often takes a longer to execute due to the greater sophistication of the test.

Red teams normally have greater expertise with real-world hacking tactics, tools, and methods than pen testers do. Additionally, red teamers may use zero-day vulnerabilities to break into a system, whereas pen testers usually try to exploit known vulnerabilities instead. For example, red teamers often can access backdoor pathways and execute remote shells, which is a testing measure most pen testers cannot do. A red team test is often more complex in assessment and casts a wider infrastructure scope, which can also take longer to conduct than a pen test. 

Pen testers often focus on known exploits and specific web applications to test for them. These measures can include scanning and enumeration, vulnerability scanning and assessment, social engineering, and phishing. They can also use various automated tools, including password crackers and network scanners. By doing this, a pen test can often yield reported results in a faster timeframe than many red teaming assessments. 

3. Reported Results

The reporting between pen testing and red teaming will commonly differ in the results of the assessment scope done. For example, pen testing typically results in a detailed report that identifies vulnerabilities and provides recommendations for remediation. The report from a pen test commonly includes an executive summary, an overview of the assessment method done, a structured summary of the findings, a list of vulnerabilities, and recommended remediation measures. The report may also include a risk assessment that assigns severity levels to the identified vulnerabilities.

In contrast, red teaming reports are often more comprehensive and provide a detailed analysis of an organization’s overall weak points and security posture. The report typically includes a description of the red team’s activities conducted, exploits that were identified, and areas needed for your security improvement. This report may also include a detailed analysis of the organization’s response efforts in the event of a simulated attack, including the detection and response capabilities of your overall system.

Commonly whether you have a red team assessment exercise done or a pen test conducted, your report should also include a detailed timeline for remediation. Both reports should also have recommended a plan of action for ongoing monitoring and retesting to ensure more optimal security. 

Red Teaming vs. Pen Testing: What’s Best for You?

In deciding which type of system assessment is best for your business, it can come down to a few different factors. Many times it can come down to how prompt you need the assessment completed and the budget your company can allot for it. In addition to those two main quantifiers, here are a few additional use cases to explore while deciding if a pen test or a red team assessment is right for you:

Regulatory Compliance 

Many industries are held to legal and government compliance standards that require periodic security testing. This can include penetration testing and red teaming assessments. In some instances, these regulations may specify the scope and methodology of the testing needing to be conducted.

These regulations can make it more appropriate to focus on specific vulnerabilities rather than conducting a full-scale attack simulation. If your industry only requires a pen test to maintain compliance, then a red teaming exercise conducted may not be as necessary unless you want a larger part of your infrastructure examined to increase security posture.

Examining Your Risk Tolerance

Red teaming exercises are designed to simulate real-world attacks on your system and infrastructure. Unfortunately, it can occasionally result in unexpected consequences or disruptions to operations. If an organization has a low-risk tolerance or is concerned about potential disruptions, it may be more appropriate to focus on targeted pen testing to minimize the risk of unintended consequences than a full-fledged red team assessment. In contrast, if your business is at higher risk, then the time and budget for a red team exercise can yield a great grasp on identifying exploits and remedying them. 

Limited Scope and Time

Pen testing exercises can be conducted more quickly than red team exercises given they have a more specific scope and focus on testing specific application exploits. Red teaming exercises can take weeks or even months to complete, depending on the scope and objectives of the testing. If time is limited, it may be more appropriate to focus on targeted pen testing to identify specific vulnerabilities that can be fixed more promptly.

Although both red teaming and pen testing have a similar goal, companies do this in order to ensure better system and digital infrastructure security. Pen testing can be a method that can yield quicker results and be done on a more consistent basis since it’s more specific to applications than red teaming. While red teaming can be more costly and can be time-consuming to conduct, it can be effective in getting a greater scope of your digital threat landscape (though automated red teaming could be one way to lower the costs). 

How Flare Supports You

Offensive security assessments can be beneficial to understanding your overall security posture. Whether you choose pen testing or red teaming, these measures can help you better identify vulnerabilities and provide remediation measures to increase your cybersecurity. Flare can support you in achieving better offensive security with providing threat intelligence insights on your business. Contact us today to get started.