Table of Contents
📌 Key Facts
- Goal: Test detection and response, not enumerate vulnerabilities
- Scope: Defined adversary objective (e.g. exfiltrate customer data, disrupt payments)
- Techniques: Phishing, exploitation, lateral movement, social engineering, sometimes physical
- Duration: Typically 6-16 weeks (vs days/weeks for a pen test)
- UK frameworks: CBEST (Bank of England), TIBER-UK (FCA-aligned), STAR-FS (CREST)
- Best for: Organisations with mature SOC/MDR wanting to validate detection capability
💡 Understanding red team exercises
A red team exercise is a goal-oriented adversary simulation in which a team of ethical attackers attempts to breach an organisation’s defences using the techniques real attackers would use — including technical exploitation, social engineering, and physical intrusion. The objective is not to find every vulnerability (that’s a pen test) but to test whether the organisation’s people, processes, and technology can detect and respond to a realistic attack. In the UK, the most rigorous red team exercises follow regulator-defined frameworks such as CBEST (Bank of England) and TIBER-EU.
Red team exercises are growing in popularity, with 4 in 5 organisations increasing their security investment to cover such activities. But what is a red team exercise, and should you perform one on your business?
📜 The origins of the red team exercise
Red teaming exercises are routed in tactical war games. Back in the 19th century, the German military would plan their attacks – including how to account for unpredictable events, like the weather – to give their men the best chance of success.
Today, red teaming is more commonly associated with the battles fought in the digital sphere against threat actors. The objective is not to win or lose. Rather, to simulate an attack so you can build resilience against them. The focus is on revealing vulnerabilities in your processes, people and technology so it delivers higher assurance about your security posture.
🔍 What do red team exercises involve?
The red team must step into the enemy’s shoes to think and act as a bad actor would. Unlike penetration testing, which tests a specific application/system, a red team exercise targets the broader IT infrastructure. The focus is always to reveal vulnerabilities in your organisation’s security – not to play the blame game, but to know how to strengthen the protection surrounding your attack surface.
It’s common for a red teaming to follow the MITRE ATT&CK® Framework, a globally-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques. The red teaming simulates an attack using real-world techniques and methods. It could range from simply stealing user credentials or adding malware via a USB key, to more sophisticated techniques like phishing emails or an SQL injection.
✅ Advantages of red team exercises
A red team exercise creates a low-risk training environment where your team is safe to make mistakes. A bit like an experiment, the objective of a red team exercise is to test and learn – once you know where your weak points are, you can take action to strengthen the security and protect them. For example, to reconfigure existing security tools, automate manual processes, and train employees. In strengthening your overall security posture, your business is more prepared to face the most sophisticated threats.
One of the most significant benefits of undertaking a red team exercise is that it goes beyond technology and tests your people and processes – this is particularly valuable when insider threats have increased by 47%. Red teaming provides a rare opportunity for positive collaboration between the business, IT and security teams, who will all be responsible for restoring business-as-usual services in the event of a cyber incident.
Finally, it is considered best practice and a requirement for many security certifications to perform a test of cyber incident response plans. A red team exercise is the most thorough and realistic approach to performing such tests.
⚖️ Considerations for a fruitful red team exercise
Typically, red teaming is focused on finding faults that lie deep within your business. Therefore, before undertaking an exercise, it’s essential to ensure the people chosen for the red team possess the right skills, including:
- Knowledge of computer systems and security techniques.
- Software development skills to create new tools that bypass security controls.
- Penetration testing, so time isn’t wasted on easily detected vulnerabilities.
- Social engineering so you can encourage others to share information or their credentials.
While it might feel scary to find the “skeletons in the closet”, it’s important to remember that every business has weaknesses, so if your red team doesn’t find something, they’ve not done their job properly. It’s better to find and address any flaws today than wait for a bad actor to take advantage of them tomorrow.
Rather than a simple pass/fail, think about setting practical objectives to help you prioritise remediation actions.
Remember: the test is purposefully designed to push your security to its limit, so beware of ‘off-the-shelf’ offerings. Every organisation is different, so no two red team exercises can ever be the same.
💰 What is the cost and duration of a red team exercise?
Like a real-world attack, a red team exercise can take hours, days, weeks – even months.
More important is how frequently you perform the exercise, because the threat landscape continues to evolve and you need to keep pace with change.
In a recent survey of security-aware organisations, nearly a quarter (23%) performed a monthly red team exercise. Commit to frequent testing; it will boost your resilience against an attack and reduce the potential impact on your business.
⚠️ Be prepared for the inevitable
Unfortunately, cyber attacks are a certainty. It doesn’t matter how much security controls and training you throw at your business, you will always have vulnerabilities open to being exploited.
However, our red team testing service can reduce the frequency and impact of cyber attacks within your business. In particular, a red team test carried out by a skilled team will identify critical vulnerabilities that can be subsequently remediated before a malicious third party exploits them.
CyPro’s highly-skilled security testers perform red teaming exercises for a wide range of organisations. Talk to us to find out how we can help you identify and remediate critical vulnerabilities within your infrastructure.
| Activity | Purpose | Scope | Duration | Typical UK cost |
| Vulnerability scan | Find known CVEs | Whole estate | Days | £2k-£10k |
| Penetration test | Find exploitable vulns in scoped target | Defined targets | 1-4 weeks | £5k-£30k |
| Red team exercise | Test detection + response | Goal-led, full attack chain | 6-16 weeks | £40k-£200k+ |
| Purple team exercise | Collaborative red+blue improvement | Specific TTPs from MITRE ATT&CK | 1-3 weeks | £15k-£60k |
| CBEST / TIBER intelligence-led test | Regulator-defined adversary simulation | Critical functions of regulated firm | 6+ months | £200k-£1m+ |
🧠 FAQ
What is a red team exercise?
A red team exercise is a goal-oriented adversary simulation where ethical attackers attempt to achieve a defined objective — such as exfiltrating sensitive data — using the same techniques as real-world threat actors. The aim is to test the organisation’s detection, response, and resilience, not to enumerate every technical vulnerability.
How is a red team exercise different from a penetration test?
A penetration test aims to find as many exploitable vulnerabilities as possible in a defined scope, usually within days or weeks. A red team exercise is goal-oriented and tests whether the organisation can detect and respond to a realistic, multi-stage attack — typically running for 6 to 16 weeks across the entire attack surface.
What is the difference between red, blue, and purple teaming?
Red teamers attack. Blue teamers defend (typically the SOC). Purple teaming is a collaborative exercise where red and blue work together — red executes specific MITRE ATT&CK techniques while blue measures and improves detection coverage in real time. Purple teaming is increasingly preferred for ongoing capability building.
What is CBEST?
CBEST is an intelligence-led red teaming framework run by the Bank of England for systemically important UK financial institutions. It uses bespoke threat intelligence to design realistic adversary simulations against critical economic functions. CBEST tests are mandatory for in-scope firms.
What is TIBER-UK?
TIBER-UK is the UK implementation of the European Central Bank’s TIBER-EU framework — Threat Intelligence-based Ethical Red Teaming. It provides a structured methodology for intelligence-led red team tests across the UK financial sector, complementing CBEST.
How much does a red team exercise cost in the UK?
A standard UK red team exercise typically costs £40,000-£200,000 depending on scope, duration, and provider. Regulator-aligned tests (CBEST, TIBER-UK) cost considerably more — often £200,000 to over £1 million — because they include bespoke threat intelligence, longer engagement timelines, and regulator coordination.
How long does a red team exercise take?
A typical commercial red team exercise runs 6-16 weeks: 1-2 weeks for intelligence and planning, 4-12 weeks of active testing, and 1-2 weeks for reporting and debrief. Regulator-aligned exercises (CBEST, TIBER-UK) typically run 6 months or longer end-to-end.
When does a red team exercise add value?
Red team exercises add the most value when an organisation has a mature SOC, MDR, or in-house security operations capability that needs validating. They are less useful for early-stage security programmes where basic controls are still missing — in that case, prioritise pen testing, control hardening, and SOC build-out first.
