Red Teaming: Definition, Process, and When to Use It

Red teaming is an adversary emulation exercise designed to validate whether your organization can detect and respond to realistic attacker behavior end-to-end. Unlike a typical penetration test, red teaming focuses less on listing vulnerabilities and more on proving outcomes: whether attackers can achieve objectives—and whether your SOC and incident response processes stop them in time.

How it works

A red team engagement is best thought of as a campaign simulation rather than a checklist. The exact shape varies, but mature red teaming generally follows the phases below.

1) Define objectives and success criteria (what “winning” means)

Red teaming starts with business-relevant objectives. Examples:

Prove whether an attacker can access sensitive data (e.g., customer PII, source code, financial systems)
Validate the SOC’s ability to detect credential theft and lateral movement
Measure time-to-detect (TTD) and time-to-respond (TTR) for a defined attack path
Test incident handling workflows: triage, escalation, containment, comms, legal/regulatory steps

A strong engagement has measurable outcomes such as:

Detection coverage: which actions triggered alerts, which didn’t
Dwell time: how long the red team persisted undetected
Response quality: correct scoping, containment, eradication, and recovery
Control effectiveness: MFA, EDR policy, segmentation, logging, least privilege

2) Establish Rules of Engagement (ROE) and safety guardrails

ROE is critical. It defines what is in scope, what is prohibited, and how risk is managed.

Common ROE components:

Scope: systems, networks, cloud tenants, subsidiaries, third parties
Allowed tactics: social engineering, phishing, physical entry, wireless testing
Prohibited actions: destructive payloads, production data exfiltration, denial of service
Time window: business hours vs 24/7; blackout dates
Deconfliction: emergency contacts if something breaks or the blue team escalates
Evidence handling: where data is stored, who can see it, retention and deletion
Legal: written authorization, liability, and privacy constraints

A well-run red team aims to be realistic, not reckless.

3) Threat model and adversary emulation planning

Red teams often base their plan on:

Known threat actor tradecraft relevant to your industry (e.g., ransomware affiliates, APT-style intrusion sets)
Framework mapping (MITRE ATT&CK techniques, detection opportunities, likely choke points)
Your environment’s actual architecture (identity provider, endpoint controls, cloud posture)

This becomes an attack narrative: initial access → execution → persistence → privilege escalation → lateral movement → objectives → cleanup.

4) Execute: gain access, expand foothold, and pursue objectives

Red team operations prioritize stealth and realistic constraints. Typical avenues:

Identity: phishing for credentials, token theft, OAuth abuse, password spraying (if allowed)
Endpoints: initial execution, living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBins), EDR evasion within ROE
Network: reconnaissance, pivoting, internal phishing, service exploitation
Cloud/SaaS: misconfigured roles, access keys, consent grants, mailbox rules
Physical (if in scope): tailgating, badge cloning tests, rogue device placement

The point is not to “pop a box” and stop. It’s to test whether defenders can see the activity and stop it.

5) Observe blue team detection and response (with or without their awareness)

Engagements may be:

Covert: blue team isn’t told it’s happening (more realistic, higher coordination risk)
Semi-covert: a small trusted group knows (common in practice)
Overt: everyone knows and uses it as a learning exercise (closer to purple teaming)

A key output is how detections and escalations played out in real time:

Were alerts generated?
Were they triaged correctly?
Did responders contain the right hosts/accounts?
Did they scope the intrusion correctly?
Did business stakeholders get notified appropriately?

6) Report and remediate: the engagement ends with changes, not slides

A useful red team deliverable includes:

Executive summary: business impact, high-level findings, risk narrative
Attack timeline: key events and dwell time
Technique mapping: what worked, what was blocked, where visibility failed
Root causes: misconfigurations, missing logs, excessive privileges, weak segmentation
Action plan: prioritized remediation with owners and timeframes
Detection engineering: recommended alert logic, correlation, tuning guidance
Retest plan: validate that improvements actually changed outcomes

In mature programs, red teaming feeds a continuous cycle: improve controls → validate → improve again.

Technical Notes: What good telemetry looks like (examples)

Red teaming lives or dies by visibility. Your SOC should be able to answer: “What happened, where, and by whom?” Below are practical examples defenders commonly use to validate coverage. Adjust to your log sources and platform.

Identity: suspicious logon patterns (Windows)

Look for unusual logon types, new admin group membership, or lateral movement signals.

Security Event ID 4624  (Successful logon)
Security Event ID 4625  (Failed logon)
Security Event ID 4672  (Special privileges assigned)
Security Event ID 4728/4732 (Member added to security-enabled group)
Security Event ID 4769  (Kerberos service ticket requested)

PowerShell quick triage on a DC (example):

Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='Security'; Id=4624} -MaxEvents 50 |
  Select-Object TimeCreated, Id, Message

Endpoint: process execution and “living off the land”

If you have EDR or Sysmon, baseline common LOLBins and alert on suspicious parent/child chains.

Suspicious binaries (context-dependent):
powershell.exe, wscript.exe, cscript.exe, mshta.exe, rundll32.exe,
regsvr32.exe, certutil.exe, bitsadmin.exe, wmic.exe

Example: Sysmon Event ID 1 (Process Create) patterns you may hunt for:

ParentImage: *\winword.exe
Image: *\powershell.exe
CommandLine: *-enc*   (encoded command)

Network: lateral movement indicators

On internal networks, common red team movement often leaves traces:

SMB and admin shares (\\host\C$)
Remote service creation
RDP to atypical hosts
Authentication bursts from a single workstation

If you’re collecting firewall/proxy logs, validate that: - East-west traffic is logged where it matters - DNS queries are captured (often the earliest signal of discovery and staging)

Note: The specifics depend heavily on your stack (EDR, SIEM, IAM, cloud provider). The operational takeaway is to ensure the minimum viable telemetry exists before you “grade” detection.

When you’ll encounter it

You’ll see “red teaming” in several practical contexts. Knowing which one you’re dealing with helps set expectations.

1) Security program validation (SOC/IR readiness)

Organizations use red teaming to answer: Can we actually detect and stop a real intrusion? This is common when a SOC is newly built, restructured, or moving to a new SIEM/EDR.

You’ll be involved if you are: - SOC lead / detection engineer - Incident responder - IAM admin, endpoint admin, network engineer

2) High-stakes events: audits, M&A, and major platform changes

Red teams are often scheduled around: - Cloud migrations - Identity provider changes (SSO/MFA rollouts) - New EDR or logging pipeline deployments - Pre-audit assurance and board-level risk reporting - Post-merger integration risk

The goal is to validate that the new environment didn’t create blind spots or new attack paths.

3) Ransomware and breach prevention initiatives

Many red team programs focus explicitly on: - Credential access and privilege escalation - Lateral movement to critical servers - Backup access and recovery readiness - Containment speed and decision-making

This is especially relevant for SMBs moving into managed detection and response (MDR) or trying to prove resilience without disrupting production.

4) Continuous security testing programs

Large orgs may run red teaming as an ongoing capability: - Quarterly or semi-annual campaigns - Rotating scenarios mapped to relevant adversaries - Integration with purple team sprints and control improvements

In these environments, “red team” is less a one-off and more a feedback mechanism for security engineering.

Tools to support red team outcomes (without turning it into a tool-led exercise)

Red teaming is fundamentally about people, process, and telemetry—but a few tools commonly help organizations reduce real-world risk between exercises:

Password manager + strong credential hygiene: Using a managed vault can cut down credential reuse and speed incident containment. One option is 1Password: Try 1Password →
Endpoint malware cleanup (for user endpoints and small teams): A remediation tool can be useful for post-exercise hardening or actual incidents. One option is Malwarebytes: Get Malwarebytes →
VPN for safer remote work (reduces exposure on untrusted networks): If your staff travels or uses public Wi‑Fi, a VPN can reduce opportunistic interception risk. Options include NordVPN: Check NordVPN pricing → or Surfshark: Try Proton VPN →

Practical decision guide: do you need red teaming or something else?

If you’re deciding whether you need a red team engagement, the practical test is this:

If your question is “Are we vulnerable?”, start with vulnerability management and a pentest.
If your question is “Would we detect and stop a real attacker in time—and can we prove it?”, that’s red teaming.

For defensive context that often comes up in debriefs (especially around account takeover), see our glossary entry on multi-factor authentication (MFA): what is multi factor authentication

This article may contain affiliate links. We earn a commission on qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.