What Is Red Teaming, and Why is it Important?
In the 1980s, the world feared all things Red. Red represented Communism, the Red Army, Ivan Drago, and movies like Red Dawn. These fears dissipated by the end of 1991, when it was discovered that while nuclear deterrents, Patrick Swayze and Rocky weren’t very effective at ending the USSR, Communism was no match for the Big Mac. Today, we have “Red Teaming,” which sounds ominous, but is a valuable cybersecurity tool. So, what is Red Teaming, and why is it important?
As we discussed in last week’s blog, offensive cybersecurity tools are essential in keeping your company’s information and systems safe. There are a wide variety of tools one can use to test cyber defenses, with equally offensive-sounding names like Sniper, URL Fuzzer, SQLi Exploiter, XSS Exploiter, HTTP Request Logger, and Subdomain Takeover, to name a few.
A Red Team attack is usually a group of ethical hackers assigned to try and break into a company’s network. This is done in a coordinated attack on the organization’s cybersecurity, with the intent to exploit weaknesses through the tools listed above, e-mail phishing, stealing user credentials, and other methods. They simulate a real-world attack, trying to remain undetected.
“Red Teaming is a great way to gauge a company’s cybersecurity readiness,” says MacguyverTech CEO Steve (Mac) McKeon. “The only downside is that it can be disruptive to a company’s network, so it should be scheduled during off-peak hours.”
Depending on the organization’s plans, Red Teaming can be done when an organization’s cybersecurity team (unsurprisingly referred to as a Blue Team) is prepared for it, or it can be done without warning. “The key to good cybersecurity is persistent readiness,” McKeon continued. “What we’ve done is combined both offensive and defensive tools and created a Persistent Vulnerability Assessment for our clients. It keeps their cybersecurity at peak readiness.”
One of the benefits of Red Teaming is that is simulates an actual cyberattack without placing an organization’s data and operability in danger. While it can be intrusive, it doesn’t actually compromise valuable information, and provides an honest look at how effective that organization’s cybersecurity really is.
“We can do both penetration test scans and actual penetration tests for our clients,” says McKeon. “We’ve had organizations hire us and try to breach their security, and when they ask us when we’re going to attack, we show them the report. We were in and out of their network, and they never knew we were there. Then we showed them what was wrong, and how to fix it.”
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