Cyber-attacks are evolving every day. Thanks to AI, threat actors are becoming more sophisticated, routinely bypassing modern security solutions. This creates a challenge for organizations, as they are forced to continuously rethink their defenses to survive these evolving cyber threats.

It’s time for organizations to recognize that cybersecurity cannot be a static wall but rather needs to operate like a coordinated sports team: always agile and vigilant to defend the goal post. One such way of strengthening defenses is through a multifaceted security testing approach known as Red, Blue, and Purple Teaming. These color-coded teams work together as three pillars to build a resilient network and infrastructure. Let’s take a closer look into what they do, why they matter, and when organizations should use them.

Red Team: Thinking Like the Enemy

The Red Team acts like real world hackers - creative, continuously searching, and patiently waiting to hit the right spot. Their job is to use hacker-style tactics and techniques against an organization’s infrastructure and security defenses to find weaknesses.

By doing this, the Red Team helps uncover gaps and flaws in current processes within the organization. Red Team assessments are usually “black box,” meaning the team members have little to no knowledge of the internal workings of the organization’s processes, or “grey box” in which they have limited prior information. They use a mix of digital tools and manual methods including physical tactics to find vulnerabilities and weaknesses in systems and infrastructure.

Some common tactics include:

• Deep Reconnaissance: Attackers spend weeks or even months doing their homework looking for information that is publicly available. This can include scanning employee social media accounts for any clues such as work-related travel photos, photos that show office badges, email addresses, or other seemingly harmless details that reveal more than intended. They also search the dark web to find internal data leaks including employee credentials or company trade secrets. The Red Team members work as undercover investigators, searching for information and employees’ digital footprints that can be used to craft realistic attack scenarios or exploit organizational weaknesses.
• Social Engineering: Just like hackers, Red Teams use phishing (email) or vishing (voice) attacks to trick employees into revealing sensitive information or granting access. They may even attempt physical intrusion through “tailgating” - trying to walk into an office by following someone to bypass entry systems. The idea is to exploit human nature instead of technological barriers since the dominant cause of all cyber incidents is human error.
• Holding Space: Once they get in, Red Teams don’t grab and run. They try to see how long they can stay hidden while moving toward the organization’s internal systems and network. The goal here is for the Red Team to show how long they can stay inside the system and how far they can reach without anyone noticing.

Best Use Cases for Red Teaming

Red Teams assess the effectiveness of existing security controls and uncover exploitable weaknesses that might go undetected through traditional vulnerability scans. They also help test the incident response capabilities of an organization and evaluate its overall preparedness.

Here are some cases where an organization can benefit from Red Team assessments:

• Maturity: A Red Team assessment can benefit an organization that needs to validate whether its security investments are truly working as intended. The Red Team reveals if the tools and technologies in place withstand the tactics used by threat actors. The assessment helps an organization visualize whether an attacker could break into the internal network despite its defenses.
• Stress Test: A Red Team assessment can help an organization understand how well its defense team (or Blue Team) performs under pressure. Unannounced Red Team tests can be launched to evaluate how well an organization’s defense team handles a crisis and whether staff is prepared for a real-world incident.
• New Product Launches: Red Teaming can help an organization prepare to deploy a major new product or infrastructure. Before going live, the Red Team can find the hidden paths an attacker might take to break into these new systems. Due to the interconnective nature of infrastructure, a new system can easily become an entry point into the existing environment. Red Team assessments help uncover these logical flaws before the entire setup goes live.

The Blue Team: The 24/7 Guardians

Now that we understand Red Team, we can better understand its opposite: the Blue Team. The Red Team’s goal is to break into the systems and networks; the Blue Team’s goal is to stop them from doing so.

In essence, the Blue Team’s mission is to guard the goal post so that no attacker can get through it and score. The team’s main agenda is to protect critical assets within the organization and look for any signs of suspicious or unauthorized activity. Blue Teams must remain constantly vigilant, as attacks don’t come with warnings.

Some of the methods used by Blue Teams to achieve their defensive goals are:

• Leveraging Technology: Blue Teams collect, analyze and correlate logs from different applications such as the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS), and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). They look for signs of malicious activity or unusual behaviour such as an employee logging in at odd hours or from an unusual location.
• Hardening the Perimeter: Blue Teams ensure that the network security controls are properly configured as per operational needs, that applications and hardware are regularly patched, and that employees and stakeholders have only the minimum privileges necessary to do their jobs. They also keep track of threat intelligence from external sources to stay aware of emerging risks and proactively safeguard the perimeter.
• Incident Response: The Blue Team is the first to get involved in incident response activities. They develop, maintain, and execute documented procedures for handling different types of incidents within the organization.

Best Use Cases for Blue Teaming

Blue Teams’ objectives are to maintain security controls, detect and manage intrusions, and continuously remediate risks and vulnerabilities. Here are some cases where Blue Teams can be beneficial to organizations:

• Everyday Protection: Blue Teaming is a necessity for organizations to survive today’s evolving cyber-attacks. They keep watch 24X7 and protect the organization from everyday threats.
• Regulatory Compliance: Blue Teams help an organization adhere to compliance and regulations. Because they know what each standard and regulation requires, Blue Teams help an organization follow a security policy that is in line with regulatory requirements such as HIPAA, GDPR, or PCI-DSS.
• Continuous Improvement: Blue Teams lead the effort for executing incident response activities when incidents occur. They create and tailor playbooks to provide step-by-step procedures for managing different incidents and use experiences from handling incidents as learning opportunities to strengthen organization’s ability to handle future incidents.

The Purple Team: The Collaborative Bridge

Purple Teaming serves as a bridge between the Red and Blue Teams, fostering collaboration with the intention of maximizing the benefits of both teams. The Purple Team was created to bridge the gap between offensive and defensive operations so that each team can use each other’s insights to improve. Red Team findings help strengthen Blue Team defenses, while Blue Team visibility and detection insights inform future Red Team tactics. For example, the Red Team can show their attack methods while the Blue Team validates whether they notice the intrusion.

A Purple Team exercise is a joint exercise with full transparency and no hidden tests. The Red Team may show specific attack techniques, such as injection attempts on a server, while the Blue Team observes whether alerts are triggered or defensive tools detect the activity. If something doesn’t trigger as expected, both teams work together to understand why and determine how to improve detection and response. The goal of the Purple Team is simple: have both teams work together to give continuous feedback for learning and build a stronger defense strategy.

Best Use Cases for Purple Team

Here are some cases where organizations can benefit from Purple Team:

• Tuning Existing Tools and Testing New Ones: Organizations can use Purple Team exercises to test their existing security tools and ensure they are properly configured and performing as expected when it comes to detecting attacks. New tools can also be tested when they are added to the environment to confirm they integrate smoothly and can detect and alert on the tricks used by attackers.
• Bridging Silos: Purple Teaming helps break down operational silos by fostering collaboration between teams and reinforcing the idea that everyone contributes to a strong cybersecurity culture. A Purple Team assessment can benefit an organization that wants its Red and Blue Teams to work together, not compete, to build resilience into systems and operations. The goal is not to see who “wins,” but to strengthen defenses collectively.
• Rapid Skill Building: Purple Team engagements accelerate skill development and knowledge sharing by providing hands-on, real‑time learning in a controlled environment. A Purple Team assessment can benefit an organization that wants both Red and Blue Teams to grow their capabilities through cross‑functional learning. For example, it could help the Red Team understand defensive gaps while teaching the Blue Team to think like hackers and improve their detection and response skills.

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

A recent cybersecurity report highlighted that although IT and IT security are ultimately have the same goal, they're often running in different lanes. According to a recent study, a staggering 72% of professionals report security data and IT data are siloed in their organization, which contributes to corporate misalignment and elevated security risk. Additionally, 63% reported that siloed data slows down security response times and 54% said that siloed data weakens their organization's security posture.

These numbers highlight the need for organizations to build a united front where offensive and defensive teams work together to build a holistic security ecosystem. The Red Team should push the Blue Team to the limit while uncovering real-world weaknesses. The Blue Team can then prioritize fixes based on what the Red Team managed to exploit. On the other hand, the Blue Team also needs to help the Red Team sharpen its focus to better bypass defences. It’s like a two-way street. The simulation needs to produce relevant outcomes that help build a stronger security strategy.

The role of the Purple Team is also critical, acting as the engine that keeps everything running smoothly. Purple Team collaboration ensures that both teams are getting live training and that security enhancements are made in the right places based on feedback. The notion of all teams working together means continuously adapting, updating, and absorbing the maximum benefits from the tests to build a stronger security posture.

Time to Build Dynamic Resilience

Organizations need to build resilience with the mindset that walls can be broken, but it should be incredibly difficult to do so. And if threat actors do get in, they need to be detected and stopped before they do any further harm.

This strategy can be achieved by setting up synchronized Red, Blue and Purple Teams. These teams help organizations elevate their game against zero-day attacks, with the Red Team giving a reality check, the Blue Team keeping a sharp lookout, and the Purple Team ensuring the two teams work together to build a resilient organization.