This is as true in penetration testing, often abbreviated as pen testing, as it is in many other areas of cyber security defense. A significant change to pen testing that delivers extensive business benefits is the adoption of Purple Teaming. This approach enhances the detection of vulnerabilities, speeds up closing any discovered security gaps, and delivers knowledge transfer to in-house cybersecurity teams to improve cybersecurity defense in organizations. It also has the potential to generate significant cost savings in multiple ways during and after the period when pen testing is occurring.
Red + Blue = Purple
Traditionally, pen testing has been a siloed operation. Red teams perform attacks against the networks and systems, and blue teams defend. However, in the modern cybersecurity landscape, this approach has been shown to have disadvantages. These include significant time delays between pen testing and the fixing of any vulnerabilities discovered. Also, if the defensive blue team is not aware of the pen test happening, it can trigger their defensive alerting or response measures — leading to false positives and lost focus.
The Rise of Purple Teams
Purple Teaming is a collaborative approach to pen testing that merges red and blue teams and expertise, transforming penetration testing into a collaborative process that boosts security and delivers cost savings and business benefits. Purple teaming tears down the walls between the Blue and Red Teams and dissolves the siloed approach.
Read more about the Purple Team process and how OccamSec approaches the practice on our Purple Team landing page.
The business and cost benefits of the Purple Team method include:
Enhanced Detection and Response – By working together in real-time, any critical vulnerabilities that the Red Team members discover get relayed to Blue Team defenders immediately, and a plan to fix the issue implemented as quickly as possible. This rapid detection and response to security issues minimizes downtime and potential disruptions to business operations due to a successful future exploit of a security gap. We’ve all seen the costs associated with recovery from a cyberattack like ransomware or a data breach. Purple Teaming decreases the likelihood of an attack succeeding and reduces the potential financial and reputational impacts to a business.
Knowledge Transfer – While working together directly on penetration testing as well as discussing and planning to address any security issues discovered, the defensive Blue Team members can learn from the Red Team. This enables staff in the organization that commissioned the pen test to increase their skills and improve their company’s overall security posture, with the associated benefits that flow from the increased security and a happier, more skilled workforce.
Improved Culture of Collaboration – The collaboration and enhanced threat intelligence that starts with the Blue and Red teams typically extends to other parts of the Blue Team organization. By fostering a collaborative approach in this one area of cybersecurity, it often quickly spreads to other aspects of security and beyond. A culture of collaboration leads to better overall business planning and decision-making that improves the business’s services and boosts the bottom line.
Improved Cost Effectiveness of Pen Testing – Combining Blue and Red Teams into a single cohesive entity increases the testing coverage that is possible within an agreed timeframe, and it reduces the overall costs for covering that threat surface. This integration leads to significant savings in personnel time and technology costs.
Reduced Incident Response Costs – A collaborative approach during and after pen testing significantly reduces the time and resources spent on incident response, leading to lower operational costs and increased business productivity due to reduced downtime. In some cases, the ability to demonstrate more efficient cybersecurity practices can also deliver significant reductions in the premiums needed to secure cybersecurity insurance.
Purple Teaming is not without its challenges. It can sometimes be difficult to establish effective collaboration between those used to doing cyber defense and those (usually external) who look to find and highlight deficiencies in IT system security.
The OccamSec team can make sure you get the benefits from Purple Pen Testing while avoiding known challenges.
OccamSec Purple Team Services
When implementing a successful Purple Teaming strategy, working with an experienced cybersecurity practitioner is essential. OccamSec has extensive expertise in delivering Purple Team pen testing across multiple clients and industry sectors.
Our experts are an ideal choice for organizations of all sizes. We deliver:
Expertise in Defensive and Offensive Cybersecurity – The OccamSec Pen Testing team understands defensive (Blue Team) and offensive (Red Team) cybersecurity tactics to a high degree. This helps our team understand and work with the cybersecurity defenders in the organizations we work with. It also enables us to show these Blue Team defenders what tactics cybercriminals will use in attacks. This experience greatly reduces the time needed to establish a Purple Team pen test, meaning that the business that hired OccamSec gets the security benefits more rapidly and gets access to highly skilled practitioners without having to construct such an expert team in-house.
Solutions Tailored for Each Organization – Every organization is unique, and no one-size-fits-all approach to Purple Team pen testing will work. Our experienced professionals have worked with many clients, and this expertise enables the creation of a unique Purple Team project ideally tailored for each new client. This brings the benefits of a focused approach that minimizes time and costs for the pen testing project and delivers target security recommendations that do not have an “off-the-shelf” bloat that is not applicable to the organization being tested.
Committed to Knowledge Transfer – Making sure that Blue Team members gain knowledge from the Purple Team pen testing experience is as important to us as finding and helping organizations fix any vulnerabilities. We aim to leave clients with a more skilled cybersecurity defense team when a pen testing project ends. As mentioned above, this improves the overall security skills and posture of the businesses team, making them more effective at protecting the organization’s data and systems from attack and also making for a more content team, which aids in staff retention.
Up-To-Date Technology – Our pen testing experts live and breathe the cybersecurity threat landscape. Keeping up to date with new threats and how to address them is a 24×7 endeavor. One that our expert team is fully committed to. When you work with our Purple Team, you can rest assured that we will use and impart knowledge about the latest cyberattack strategies, tactics, and techniques that bad actors currently use. This means that you can be sure that the resources you are investing in the Purple Team pen testing process are time and money well spent and are returning up-to-date knowledge and insights.
Built on Industry Standard Frameworks – We base our Purple Testing and communications about threats and fixes on the Mitre ATT&CK framework. This makes communicating any issues found and any remedial steps planned in language appropriate to non-IT Management as well as cybersecurity professionals. Our team works to simulate attacks using various methods in addition to the Mitre ATT&CK framework based on our experience and the client’s needs. Our simulated attack systems replicate a range of areas from the framework and serve as the basis for reporting the project results.
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced world, the threats that organizations face are constantly evolving. Purple Team pen testing plays a significant role in dealing with this dynamic threat landscape while also delivering reduced costs for pen testing and multiple ongoing business benefits.
Read more about our Purple Team Services, and contact us to discuss how we can work together to improve your organization’s cybersecurity defense posture via Purple Team pen testing.
