Red Team


Overview#

Offensive security group that emulates adversaries to test defenses. Works with blue teams to improve detection, response, and resilience.


Core objectives#

  • Establish shared definitions of Red Team for security, engineering, and leadership teams.
  • Connect Red Team activities to measurable risk reduction and resilience goals.
  • Provide onboarding notes so new team members can quickly understand how Red Team works here.

Implementation notes#

  • Identify the primary owner for Red Team, the data sources involved, and the systems affected.
  • Document the minimum viable process, tooling, and runbooks that keep Red Team healthy.
  • Map Red Team practices to standards such as ISO/IEC 27001, NIST CSF, or CIS Controls.

Operational signals#

  • Leading indicators: early warnings that Red Team might degrade (e.g., backlog growth, noisy alerts, or missed SLAs).
  • Lagging indicators: realized impact that shows Red Team failed or needs investment (e.g., incidents, audit findings).
  • Feedback loops: retrospectives and metrics reviews that tune Red Team continuously.

  • Align Red Team with defense-in-depth planning, threat modeling, and disaster recovery tests.
  • Communicate updates to stakeholders through concise briefs, dashboards, and internal FAQs.
  • Pair Red Team improvements with tabletop exercises to validate expectations.