What Is Purple Teaming?
In cybersecurity risk assessments, such as penetration tests, different parties are given different colour names depending on their roles. Generally speaking, the attackers are the red team and the defence is the blue team.
A purple team involves aspects of the red and the blue teams combined. This could include bridging a gap between offensive and defensive teams for better engagement, collaboration and feedback which, in turn, will improve the target organisation’s security posture.
What Is The Purpose Of The Purple Team?
The purple team is necessary for offering a comprehensive and coordinated cybersecurity approach which takes into account both the offensive and defensive strategies. It brings together red and blue teams in a collaborative approach to test and improve an organisation’s cybersecurity.
Usually, red and blue teams operate completely independently with the blue team – usually an internal team from the organisation – caught off guard by the red attack.
The goal of the purple team is to improve the overall security of the posture by identifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the defence and then developing and executing plans to address these. It can make the security testing process more efficient and effective, introducing opportunities for collaboration throughout and using feedback to guide defence.
What Does Purple Teaming Involve?
Purple teaming uses the knowledge and tools of both red and blue teams. This allows the purple team to identify weaknesses across the network, security system and internal processes and procedures.
Using the information learned by the purple team, an organisation can make actionable plans that will improve their security posture in the long run.
What’s The Difference Between The Purple Team And The Red And Blue Teams?
Red Team
Red teams are the attacker team. They are responsible for carrying out the attacks on an organisation’s system, simulating what a real-world attacker would do.
Blue Team
The blue team is responsible for defending against the attacks of the red team and working to secure the system.
Purple Team
A purple team uses the knowledge and skills of both the red and blue teams.
How Does Purple Team Testing Work?
Purple teaming enables security teams to improve how effectively they detect vulnerabilities and threats and monitor their network. They accurately simulate common threat scenarios and allow for the invention and implementation of new techniques designed to prevent and detect new types of threats.
At its core, purple team security testing requires communication and collaboration between red (offensive) and blue (defensive) teams. At Rosca Technologies, we do this process over 4 key steps:
1.
Workshop:
We carry out an in-person workshop to map out your organisation’s entire system to understand your company and start planning targeted attacks on your key assets.
2.
Intelligence:
We profile the types of threat groups that target organisations like yours to identify potential attacker strategies and detect weaknesses.
3.
Testing:
Based on the information gathered, we can create custom test cases tailored specifically to your organisations and built around the key concerns and threats. We then carry out these tests, working collaboratively with your security teams and recording the outcome of each test case.
4.
Reporting:
We produce a comprehensive report and carry out a thorough debrief to discuss the findings and evaluate the company’s detection and prevention capabilities.
Why Is The Purple Team Important?
The purple team holds a great deal of importance. In typical security assessments, red and blue teams are kept completely separate so that the blue hint has no clues about the impending attacks that could affect their defence response. However, a purple team exercise can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the testing process.
Through increased collaboration and communication, purple testing brings the two teams together to identify areas which need further investigation and not waste time on less relevant areas.
What Are The Benefits Of Purple Teaming?
There are various benefits to bringing in a purple team for your cybersecurity testing:
- – Versatile – purple testing is suitable for multiple different sectors and organisations of every size.
- – Boosts Efficiency – purple teaming strengthens overall cybersecurity faster by working together to identify vulnerabilities and improve defences more quickly
- – Deeper Understanding – purple teaming can help security professionals gain better insight into how attackers plan and operate and how the defence responds.
- – Continuous Feedback – with purple teaming, there is a constant feedback loop between attack and defence that wouldn’t otherwise be achieved
- – Innovative Approach – bringing the red teams and blue teams together allows them to develop innovative solutions and expand their way of thinking. This exposure to different perspectives can lead to an overall increased understanding of cybersecurity for all professionals involved.
What Can Our Purple Team Services Provide?
Throughout a typical 4-6 week assessment period with Rosca Technologies we will:
- – Define and validate around 30 attack paths (both external and internal)
- – Simulate over 100 common TTPs
- – Create and test 63 custom test cases built around the clients most important assets and greatest areas of concern
- – Identify over 20 previously undetected vulnerabilities
- – Create and test around 35 custom detections across the organisation
- – Identify 20 more detection opportunities to explore further in the future
What Will You Gain from a Purple Team Test with Rosca Technologies?
- – Rosca goes beyond the straightforward to explore multiple attack vectors to your critical assets
- – We simulate threats at all levels of complexity, simulating attacks from the most basic of hacks to the most sophisticated risks.
- – The results of our test allow your organisation to enhance adjacent capabilities like incident containment and response for high-risk scenarios.
- – Our tests facilitate long-term knowledge transfer and improve collaboration between offensive and defensive security teams.
- – Thorough validation of your security controls and tools
What Are The Tools And Techniques Used For Purple Teaming?
Purple team testing uses a range of tools and techniques to identify defence weaknesses and improve overall security posture. The exercises are always interactive, collaborative and transparent.
All purple team activities are designed to improve the organisation’s procedures, systems and controls that are meant to protect the company from cybersecurity threats.
Here are some examples of purple team exercises that might be carried out:
- – Cyber malware and bugs attacks
- – Exploitation of vulnerabilities across systems and apps
- – Penetration testing of systems and networks
- – Developing and rolling out a comprehensive security plan
- – Social engineering attacks
- – Monitoring network traffic for suspicious activity
- – Regular vulnerability scans
- – Identifying and then patching security vulnerabilities
- – Security audits
- – Data encryption
- – Restriction of access to sensitive data
The exact purple team activities will depend on the organisation but will reflect both the responsibilities of the red team and those of the blue team – bringing them both to do the experience together and learn from each other.
Talk To Our Experts Today
To find out more about our purple teaming services and why they might be the right solution for your organisation, complete the form and we will call you back.