Red Teaming
Red teaming goes further than just testing your defences, it also tests your response and recovery as part of a simulated cyber attack.
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What is Red Teaming?
Red teaming gives organisations a way to proactively uncover, understand and fix security risks in both their ability to protect their digital assets and respond to potential threats.
Our UK-based red teaming adopts an ethical hacking “adversarial lens”, to help organisations identify security vulnerabilities that real attackers are likely to exploit.
Our proactive, adversarial approach ensures you strengthen the security of your systems and protect sensitive data even in the face of evolving cyber threats. Our service ensures that you can be confident in the security of your digital infrastructure, keeping your business secure in an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
What's Included?
Scope Reconnaissance
We start by clarifying the engagement’s boundaries, determining the assets, networks and applications most critical to your operations.
Intelligence Gathering
Our specialists perform detailed research and open-source intelligence, identifying potential entry points and relevant adversary tactics.
Adversarial Simulation
We emulate real-world attackers by using stealthy techniques, challenging your security measures with tactics such as social engineering and targeted exploits.
Response Evaluation
We monitor how quickly and effectively your internal teams spot and respond to suspicious activity, revealing any weaknesses in your detection processes.
Detailed Documentation
We provide clear, actionable reports, outlining what worked, where defences fell short and what steps are needed to close gaps.
Remediation Guidance
Our experts offer prioritised recommendations, helping you strengthen your security posture based on risk and business objectives.
Challenges Addressed by Red Teaming
Overconfidence
Many SMBs are over-confident in their controls because they have never been tested in a real-world attack. This leads to under-investment and more vulnerabilities.
Blind Spots
Organisations often miss advanced threats due to their sophisticated nature creating blind spots in their ability to detect and respond to real world attack scenarios.
Advanced Persistent Threats
Nation-states and organised crime are on the rise and are relentless in their attack and evasion techniques. Red Teaming mirrors these persistent tactics deployed, testing how well an organisation will actually respond.
Protection vs. Response
Invariably, most SMBs focus too much on protection rather than response or recovery capabilities. In a world where being targeted is inevitable, testing your ability to respond is crucial to building resilience.
Overconfidence
Many SMBs are over-confident in their controls because they have never been tested in a real-world attack. This leads to under-investment and more vulnerabilities.
Blind Spots
Organisations often miss advanced threats due to their sophisticated nature creating blind spots in their ability to detect and respond to real world attack scenarios.
Advanced Persistent Threats
Nation-states and organised crime are on the rise and are relentless in their attack and evasion techniques. Red Teaming mirrors these persistent tactics deployed, testing how well an organisation will actually respond.
Protection vs. Response
Invariably, most SMBs focus too much on protection rather than response or recovery capabilities. In a world where being targeted is inevitable, testing your ability to respond is crucial to building resilience.
What Our Clients Say
Benefits of Red Teaming
Our Red Teaming service empowers you to rigorously test both your ability to protect your assets, and respond / recover when crisis hits.
Real-World Attacks
Red Teaming offers a realistic simulation of your ability to respond to real-wold cyber attacks testing not only technical controls but also response process and procedures.
Hidden Vulnerabilities
Standard penetration tests are great to uncover first line security gaps, however, Red Teaming goes a layer deeper to uncover deeper more advanced vulnerabilities in your network and processes.
Incident Response
Incident response is the most critical component to your cyber security. Red Teaming tests your incident response processes in real-time, evaluating you against a simulated real-world attack.
Enhanced Awareness
Red teaming ensure employees gain a deeper understanding of how attackers operate and what they need to look out for by living the experience first hand as part of a simulation.
Validate Security Investments
Red Teaming provides actionable insights that demonstrate whether your existing security tools and processes are delivering value and providing the return on investment you expect.
Increasing Regulatory Focus
Regulatory demands are continually increasing and evolving, with many now specifically stating penetration tests and red teams are an explicit requirement.
Future-Proof Resiliency
The cyber threat landscape is highly dynamic, with threat actors switching up their strategies daily to catch organisations off-guard. Red teaming ensures you are always staying one step ahead of the attackers.
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Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
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Case Study: UK Manufacturing Firm
Client Challenge
After a series of ‘near misses’, a rapidly scaling SME in the manufacturing sector, handling sensitive customer data, wanted to assess their ability to defend against advanced cyber-attacks.
While they had baseline security controls in place, they lacked the confidence in their detection and response capabilities especially in a real-life attack.
Our Approach
Our team followed a client-centred approach, scoping and delivering a comprehensive Red Teaming exercises that targeted the client’s people, processes and technology.
- Using open-source intelligence, we identified a range of exploitable vulnerabilities, including employee emails and unpatched systems.
- Attack simulations included spear-phishing, external network exploitation and a physical intrusion attempt.
- Our team formulated simulation findings in a detailed report which was played back to the client, outlining actionable recommendations to close these security gaps.
Value Delivered
Time to Respond
Inefficiencies in their ability to respond quickly were identified and helped speed up future responses.
Fewer Incidents
Vulnerabilities in the external network perimeter were fixed which saw a drop off in total number of incidents.
Cyber Team Upskilled
By performing a real-world simulation, the cyber team learnt things they wouldn’t have done from a pen test.
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Who Needs Red Teaming?
Red Teaming was historically reserved for large enterprises, however, there has been a shift due to evolving cyber threats targeting small to medium enterprises (SMBs) and emerging companies.
As these threats grow more sophisticated and relentless, businesses that require continuous resilience and trust with their customers, need to consider red teaming to identify and address security vulnerabilities proactively.
- Small To Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs): SMBs are often targeted with the same techniques and strategies from threat actors as large Enterprises. The difference is SMBs often lack the resources to implement full-time in-house security teams to fight back.
- Fast-Growing Companies: Due to the nature of the company being a rapidly scaling business, emerging companies and scale ups need to ensure their security posture evolves and matches the pace of their growth.
- High-Value Targets For Cybercriminals: Specific industries that house sensitive data and offer critical services are often targeted by cybercriminals. For example, financial instructions, healthcare and critical infrastructure organisations.
- Organisations With Stringent Compliance Requirements: Organisations that fall under heavily regulated industries and therefore, strict regulatory frameworks (e.g. UK DPA, FCA/PRA, DORA, GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001) benefit from Red Teaming to ensure compliance and demonstrate preparedness.
Who Doesn’t Need Red Teaming Services?
- Large Enterprises With Established Security Operations: Enterprises that have already invested in robust, in-house security operations and have dedicated teams handling cyber threats around the clock may not require external 24×7 monitoring, e.g., a global corporation with a mature IT security department and advanced internal SOC capabilities.
- Sole Traders: Very small businesses with limited online presence and digital resources, such as a local service provider (e.g., a small plumbing business), may only need basic cybersecurity measures rather than Red Teaming.
- Businesses With Zero Compliance Requirements: Companies that do not fall under strict regulatory or compliance requirements, such as a small local consultancy that doesn’t handle sensitive customer or financial data, may not need the rigorous oversight that Red Teaming provides.
Our Approach
We follow a client-centred methodology to deliver red teaming to ensure that simulated attacks are highly realistic to your business and technological environment.
Test Planning
We begin with an in-depth consultation to establish clear objectives and outcomes for testing, making sure it aligns to not only your technical goals but also your organisation’s strategic objectives.
Gather Intelligence
Adopting a risk-based approach, our team conducts a thorough open-source intelligence search to identify potential vulnerabilities and technologies in your environment. This is tailored within your context to make sure it is realistic and relevant for your business.
Threat Modelling
Once complete, our team then establishes realistic simulations based on real-life adversarial attacks identified from their research and discussions with your team. These simulations are set up aligned to your specific risks and industry security landscape.
Rules of Engagement
Our security team then documents a clear test plan, attack scenarios, roadmap and timelines aligned to your expectations and operational boundaries. This ensures testing is not disruptive to your team or daily operations.
Execution of Attacks
Our team then executes the simulated attacks, using physical, social and technical attack vectors. The testing is completed in an adaptable manner, mimicking how genuine attacks evolve based on the client’s environment and response.
Detailed Reporting
Our team details the outcomes of the testing in comprehensive reports, tailored for both non-technical and technical audiences. This includes thorough actionable insights and recommendations, so your team can implement remediation strategies accordingly.
Continuous Improvement
Security is never static, and neither is our approach. Our red teaming regularly reviews and updates the service to ensure ongoing optimisation. This includes adjusting testing based on evolving threats.
Lessons Learnt
Finally, in parallel to the report shared, we hold a debriefing session to finalise findings and ensure your team is equipped to perform the recommendations.
Secure your business.
Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
Get in Touch
Secure your business.
Elevate your security, accelerate your growth. We take care of cyber security for high-growth companies, at every stage of their journey.
Get in TouchYour Team
Rob McBride
Rob is a Founding Partner at CyPro and a highly experienced CISO. Beginning his career with a successful tenure at Deloitte, Rob has since amassed a wealth of experience, notably serving as a cyber security advisor to the UK government and spearheading cloud security transformations for several global banks.
At CyPro, Rob leads the managed service business line, working extensively across multiple sectors including telecommunications, technology, higher education, travel, and retail. He is passionate about equipping small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with robust cyber security strategies to fuel their growth.
Additional Consultants
Jordan is an experienced and highly skilled senior SOC analyst who is certified as a GIAC incident handler (GCIH). He specialises in ensuring the efficient onboarding of clients to our SOC service, focusing on deploying detection rules tailored to each client’s specific threat landscape.
Jordan excels in identifying and responding to sophisticated cyber threats, leveraging his deep knowledge of threat detection tools and techniques to provide proactive protection.
Previously serving as a SOC Manager for the UK Home Office, Jordan brings extensive experience in managing large-scale security operations for critical government infrastructure. He is responsible for overseeing 24×7 monitoring, incident response, and the continuous improvement of detection strategies within our 24×7 SOC.
Luke is a seasoned Senior SOC Engineer with extensive experience in designing and managing complex SOC environments across different sectors.
As a specialist in automated detection rule development, Luke builds sophisticated detection mechanisms that enable real-time identification of potential threats. His expertise in crafting tailored SIEM rules and integrating advanced threat intelligence allows for proactive threat detection, significantly reducing response times and improving the overall security posture of the businesses he supports.
With a passion for continuous improvement, Luke also works on refining detection capabilities, ensuring that the SOC evolves alongside the latest cyber threat trends and technological advancements.
Comparison: Red Teaming vs Penetration Testing
If deciding between Red Teaming and Penetration Testing, it’s important to understand the distinct benefits each option offers.
Red Teaming
- Objective: Simulates real world attacks to test and validate both defences and the ability to respond to cyber attacks.
- Scope: Broad and stealth focused, targeting a mixture of people, technology and processes through a variety of attack vectors e.g. social engineering and technical exploitation.
- Approach: Emulation of adversaries using tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of threat actors.
- Outcome: Identified gaps in detection and response capabilities, with actionable insights into security improvements to operations.
- Who Is This Best For? Organisations with more mature security capabilities that seek to test both detection, response and mitigation strategies against advanced cyber threats.
Penetration Testing
- Objective: Identifies vulnerabilities in specific systems, applications, or networks through controlled testing (it does not test response capabilities).
- Scope: Narrow and predefined scope that focuses on finding technical weaknesses in agreed assets.
- Approach: Direct exploitation of vulnerabilities, following a checklist methodology (e.g., OWASP).
- Outcome: A detailed report of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, with clear recommendations for remediation.
- Who Is This Best For? Organisations that seeking to ensure the security of specific assets or meet compliance requirements (e.g., Cyber Essentials).
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a blue or purple team?
In cybersecurity, Red, Blue, and Purple Teams each play a distinct role in strengthening an organisation’s security posture through simulated cyberattacks and defence exercises.
• Red Teams act as adversaries, simulating real-world cyberattacks to test an organisation’s defences. They use tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) similar to those employed by malicious hackers, including penetration testing, social engineering, and lateral movement within a network. The goal of a Red Team exercise is to identify security weaknesses before attackers can exploit them.
• Blue Teams are the defensive security units within an organisation, responsible for monitoring, detecting, and responding to cyber threats. Blue Teams use intrusion detection systems (IDS), endpoint protection, threat intelligence, and incident response plans to prevent, contain, and mitigate attacks.
• Purple Teams bridge the gap between Red and Blue Teams by facilitating collaboration between offensive and defensive security teams. A Purple Team ensures that findings from Red Team exercises are effectively communicated to Blue Teams, enabling organisations to improve their security posture based on real-world attack simulations.By engaging in Red Teaming exercises, organisations gain a realistic understanding of their security vulnerabilities, while Blue and Purple Teaming strategies help translate those insights into actionable defence improvements. Our Red Team engagements provide end-to-end attack simulation and security assessments, helping businesses test, strengthen, and optimise their security capabilities.
- How does red team testing security work?
Red Teaming follows a structured approach to simulating real-world cyberattacks against an organisation’s security defences. The process typically involves eight key steps to ensure effective testing and actionable outcomes:
- Define Objectives – The Red Team engagement starts by aligning testing objectives with an organisation’s business strategy, IT infrastructure, and risk tolerance. This ensures that simulated attacks are tailored to real-world threats that the business may face.
- Gather Intelligence – Reconnaissance is performed to collect data about the organisation, its employees, infrastructure, and external attack surface. This includes analysing publicly available information, open-source intelligence (OSINT), and network reconnaissance to identify potential entry points.
- Threat Modelling – Based on the gathered intelligence, the Red Team builds attack scenarios that mimic real-world adversary tactics. These simulations emulate known cyber threat actors, including nation-state hackers, ransomware groups, and insider threats.
- Planning and Rules of Engagement – A detailed test plan, attack roadmap, and scope of engagement are documented. Clear guidelines are established to ensure that testing does not cause unintended disruption to business operations.
- Execution of Attacks – The Red Team conducts controlled cyberattacks to test the organisation’s defences. This may include network penetration testing, social engineering (phishing, impersonation), wireless attacks, and insider threat simulations.
- Detailed Documentation – All findings, exploited vulnerabilities, and security gaps are documented. The report includes a technical breakdown of attack methods, their impact, and how attackers were able to bypass security measures.
- Continuous Improvement and Feedback – Red Team findings are reviewed with internal security teams, and actionable recommendations are provided to strengthen defences.
- Post-Test Analysis and Lessons Learned – A debriefing session is conducted to discuss the effectiveness of the existing security measures, identify gaps, and outline steps for improvement.
Our Red Teaming service ensures that businesses receive real-world attack simulations, detailed insights into security weaknesses, and expert guidance on how to enhance security resilience.
- What are common red teaming tactics?
Red Teams use a diverse range of offensive techniques to simulate the actions of real-world attackers. Some of the most common tactics include:
- Application and Network Penetration Testing – Exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications, internal networks, cloud environments, and APIs to gain unauthorised access.
- Physical Security Testing – Attempting to gain access to restricted areas, server rooms, or sensitive documents through impersonation or lockpicking techniques.
- Intercepting Communications – Capturing and analysing network traffic to identify unencrypted data transmissions, weak authentication mechanisms, and insecure communication channels.
- Phishing Attacks – Sending socially engineered emails, SMS messages, or voice phishing (vishing) calls to trick employees into revealing credentials or downloading malware.
- Social Engineering – Manipulating employees through deception, impersonation, or coercion to gain access to secure systems or sensitive information.
By using these tactics, Red Team exercises reveal security gaps that traditional vulnerability assessments may overlook. Our Red Team engagements go beyond automated scanning, providing real-world attack simulation, detailed reporting, and expert-led remediation guidance.
- How does red teaming differ from penetration testing?
While both Red Teaming and penetration testing involve offensive security assessments, they differ in scope, objectives, and execution:
- Penetration Testing is a targeted assessment that focuses on identifying specific vulnerabilities within an organisation’s IT infrastructure. It typically evaluates a defined scope (e.g., a web application, cloud environment, or corporate network) using a controlled methodology. Penetration testing aims to uncover security flaws and provide technical remediation recommendations.
- Red Teaming is a broader, goal-oriented exercise that mimics real-world attackers to assess how well an organisation can detect, prevent, and respond to sophisticated cyber threats. Unlike penetration testing, Red Teaming involves multi-layered attack simulations, including social engineering, insider threat testing, and physical security assessments. The goal is to test the entire security ecosystem, not just technical vulnerabilities.
Our Red Teaming services provide a more realistic and comprehensive security assessment, allowing businesses to test their full defensive capabilities rather than just identifying technical vulnerabilities.
- What industries benefit the most from red teaming?
Red Teaming is beneficial for any organisation that wants to test and improve its cybersecurity posture, but it is particularly valuable for:
• Financial Services & Banking – Red Team exercises help banks simulate real-world cyber threats, ensuring protection against financial fraud, insider threats, and targeted attacks.
• Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals – Security testing ensures that patient data, research records, and medical systems remain protected against cybercriminals.
• Government & Defence – Red Teaming helps government agencies and defence contractors assess their resilience against nation-state cyber threats.
• Technology & SaaS Providers – Cloud-based businesses rely on Red Teaming to test network security, cloud misconfigurations, and API vulnerabilities.
• Critical Infrastructure & Energy Sector – Industrial control systems (ICS) and SCADA networks require real-world attack simulations to protect against cyber warfare and ransomware.If your organisation operates in a high-risk industry, our Red Teaming services provide an essential layer of offensive security testing and adversary simulation to identify and mitigate cyber threats.
- Why choose our red teaming services?
Real-world cyber threats do not follow a checklist—they evolve, adapt, and exploit weaknesses that are often overlooked. Our Red Teaming service offers:
- Adversary Simulation – Mimicking real-world attack techniques used by cybercriminals and nation-state actors.
- End-to-End Security Testing – Assessing technical vulnerabilities, human security awareness, and response readiness.
- CREST & CHECK Certified Experts – Our team consists of highly skilled, industry-certified Red Team professionals.
- Actionable Intelligence – Providing detailed reports, risk-based prioritisation, and step-by-step remediation guidance.
With real-world cyberattack simulation, expert-led assessment, and tailored security recommendations, we help organisations uncover weaknesses and strengthen their defences before real attackers do.
Contact us today to discuss how our Red Teaming services can help your organisation stay ahead of cyber threats.
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