Blue Teams VS Red Teams In Cybersecurity: Explained

Nowadays, there are several ways to test an organization's network security and measure the effectiveness of its incident response. Red team/blue team exercises are among the many that do both of the above.

What is a Red/Blue Team Exercise?

This type of exercise uses two teams: a red team, which tries to break down the barriers of an organization's network security, and a blue team, which works against the red team to respond to their attack.

Both teams are highly trained cybersecurity experts, one in committing cybersecurity breaches, the other in incident response and being able to identify and manage an attack.

Why are they Necessary?

Red team/blue team exercises are very useful for organizations striving to protect themselves from various types of cyberattacks — of which there is an increasing number.

They can help a business scope out weaknesses or vulnerabilities in its IT systems, as well as in its incident response. Once these gaps have been highlighted, they can make the necessary improvements to their defensive processes.

Red/blue team simulations can also help give the business proper insight into how to identify and manage a cyberattack, as well as how to restore normality to the environment after it happens.

Examples of Blue Team Exercises

Blue team service acts as the organization's defender against cyber assaults. They do this by using a range of cybersecurity tools and resources to protect the organization and help alert them to any weaknesses in their system which could leave them vulnerable to an attack. They work closely with the organization using your system or one that exactly mimics it to provide the most useful help and insight.

Blue team services may include:

• Conducting reviews of security software throughout the environment;

• Testing and updating firewalls, antivirus, and anti-malware software;

• Adopting zero trust network access or least-privilege access so that a very limited number of people can access the organization's network and giving those that do have access a very low level of it, protecting the organization from cybercriminals;

• Implementing micro-segmentation — a security measure that entails compartmentalizing the perimeters into small sections so that different parts of the network have separate access points.

Examples of Red Team Exercises

Red team exercises are offensive, in contrast to blue team exercises, their defensive counterparts. The former functions to break through the walls of a security system, using real-world attack techniques to exploit a system's vulnerabilities and use them to gain access.

Red teaming can include any of the following tests:

Vulnerability Assessments

A vulnerability assessment seeks to exploit the weaknesses of a network system to break into it. This kind of test uses various automated tools to perform an ethical cyber attack on a company in order to measure how effectively the company responds.

Penetration (pen) tests 

Similar to the above, a penetration testing also identifies the vulnerabilities in a computer system to break into it, using a mix of automated and manual tools. A pen test will often form part of a vulnerability assessment.

Social Engineering Attacks

This manner of attack is carried out by cheating humans to gain access to a computer network rather than cheating computers. The test conductor will try to penetrate the organization's cybersecurity by extracting important information from employees using deceit and manipulation 

How Often Should they be Done?

These exercises should be run fairly regularly to maintain the company's resilience against cyberattacks. This is advisable because it can take months to identify a security breach without the help of these drills, and cybercriminals may be lingering in your network for a while before you discover them independently.

Final Thoughts

Businesses of all sizes are vulnerable to cyberattacks. Whether you choose to enlist the help of a blue or red team, these exercises are a great preparatory measure to get a sense of your organization's incident response and defense mechanisms. They give practical insight into how your organization should manage a breach and how to move forward afterward.

Ideally, a company should have an internal team of cybersecurity professionals. Luckily, upskilling employees nowadays is easier than before. Anyone can access an online cyber security course in Philippines or anywhere in the world.

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