Purple teaming in cybersecurity refers to a collaborative approach that aims to enhance an organisation’s security posture by integrating the efforts of both the red and blue teams.
This approach enables real-time learning and adjustment, enhancing the organisation’s ability to detect, respond to, and mitigate threats.
Purple Teaming emphasises continuous improvement in security practices, tools, and techniques, making it a dynamic and proactive defence strategy.
Organisations can better understand their vulnerabilities through regular and iterative collaboration, strengthen defences, and reduce the risk of successful cyber attacks.
What Is The Difference Between Red Teaming, Blue Teaming, And Purple Teaming?
Red Team: In cybersecurity, the red team is a group that plays the role of an adversary. They aim to simulate cyber attacks and breaches to test the organisation’s defences, much like a real-world attacker. They use techniques ranging from penetration testing and social engineering to exploiting vulnerabilities to assess how well an organisation can withstand an attack.
Blue Team: Conversely, the blue team consists of the organisation’s internal security personnel who defend against actual and simulated attacks. They are responsible for setting up defences, monitoring security systems, responding to incidents, and implementing strategies to protect the organisation’s digital assets.
Purple Team: The purple team effectively bridges the gap between the red and blue teams. Rather than operating separately, the purple team approach fosters a collaborative environment where both teams share insights, findings, and feedback from security tests.
The primary goal here is to ensure that the knowledge and insights gained from red team exercises are directly used to improve the blue team’s defensive strategies and response mechanisms.
Why Would My Team Need Purple Teaming Services?
Your team would need purple teaming services to significantly enhance your organisation’s cybersecurity posture through a collaborative approach that merges the offensive insights of red teaming with the defensive strategies of blue teaming.
This integrated method provides a more comprehensive understanding of your cybersecurity strengths and weaknesses, allowing for real-time feedback and adjustments.
It fosters an environment of continuous learning and improvement, ensuring that defensive measures are constantly updated to counteract emerging threats.
By adopting purple teaming services, your organisation can achieve a more resilient and responsive security infrastructure, reducing the risk of successful cyber attacks and ensuring that defences are always aligned with the latest threat landscape.
1. JUMPSEC
Website: https://www.jumpsec.com/purple-teaming/
JUMPSEC, a premier team of ethical hackers and security experts in the UK, has been at the forefront of enhancing business cybersecurity since 2012. Their expertise lies in navigating and mitigating the complex landscape of cyber threats, with a robust offering that includes penetration testing, among other services.
Expanding on its comprehensive suite of services, JUMPSEC now incorporates Purple Teaming exercises. This methodology simulates realistic cyber-attack scenarios and promotes real-time feedback and adaptation between offensive and defensive strategies.
2. Redscan
Website: https://www.redscan.com/
Redscan’s Purple Team Operation enhances traditional security assessments by conducting in-depth evaluations of how effectively your technology, personnel, and protocols can detect and respond to sophisticated attacks over an extended period. This collaborative effort combines their Red Team’s offensive tactics with your Blue Team’s defensive insights, fostering a holistic security enhancement approach.
The objective of Redscan’s Purple Team is not just to breach a critical area containing sensitive information but to do so in a manner that mirrors the complexity of real-world threats. This could involve commandeering an Internet of Things (IoT) device, infiltrating a company director’s account through cyber means, or physically accessing a server room.
3. Cyber Ark
Website: https://www.cyberark.com/
CyberArk’s Purple Teaming services offer a secure method for security operations teams to evaluate their defence capabilities against cyber-attacks targeting their computing and development infrastructures. Specialising in collaborative security enhancement,
CyberArk’s Purple Team combines offence and defence strategies by emulating adversary actions using diverse tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This expertise mainly focuses on exploiting vulnerabilities in cloud and hybrid environments and DevOps pipelines and processes, fostering a more resilient and aware security team.
4. Rootshell
Website: https://www.rootshellsecurity.net/
Rootshell Security’s Purple Team as a Service offers a comprehensive evaluation of your organisation’s readiness against cyber threats by simulating the complete process of a real-world cyber-attack.
This in-depth service tests your security measures, procedures, and team effectiveness, clearly showing where your defences stand firm and where they may falter.
This approach keeps you prepared against the constantly changing landscape of cyber threats, enhancing your overall security posture and awareness.
5. Atos Group
Website: https://www.paladion.net/
Paladion’s Purple Teaming services provide a proactive and collaborative method for enhancing your security posture by combining offensive and defensive tactics in a realistic “live fire” cybersecurity test. This simulation creates a scenario where the attack and defence mechanisms are tested against your network, offering a clear view of how effectively your team and security protocols can withstand real-world threats.
The objective is to jointly identify and remediate vulnerabilities in your defences before actual cybercriminals can take advantage, ensuring the security of your organisation’s data through a unified approach.
6. McAfee
Website: https://www.mcafee.com/
McAfee’s Purple Teaming services aim to fortify your security posture by fostering an integrated approach between your internal security team or security operations centre (SOC) and McAfee’s experts in a controlled, collaborative attack and defence simulation.
With a blend of traditional and cutting-edge penetration testing alongside social engineering tactics, executed within a realistic timeframe, McAfee’s goal is to prepare your organisation to effectively detect and neutralise advanced cyber threats.
7. Crowdstrike
Website: https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/
Opponents continually advance their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), potentially causing breaches to remain unnoticed for extensive periods. Concurrently, the inability of organisations to identify complex attacks stems from inadequate security measures and vulnerabilities in their cybersecurity frameworks.
CrowdStrike provides an array of services, such as tabletop simulations, adversary emulation, and red team/blue team drills, to evaluate and enhance an organisation’s readiness against actual attacks.
8. Deloitte
Website: https://www.deloitte.com/
Deloitte employs skilled cybersecurity experts to craft realistic attack simulations during red teaming activities. These simulations are based on open-source and threat intelligence relevant to your company, including your IT systems, staff, and physical premises.
For each simulation, Deloitte creates a unique and realistic goal that, if achieved in the real world, could seriously harm your company’s assets, reputation, or compliance with laws. The Red Team then executes these simulations by adopting the methods actual cyber attackers use.
This tests the readiness of your organisation’s incident response and crisis management teams (your blue team) in a real-life scenario. The blue team mustn’t know these are simulated attacks, ensuring they respond as they would to an actual threat, providing a true test of your organisation’s defences.
9. AttackIQ
Website: https://www.attackiq.com/
Purple team exercises can leverage the MITRE ATT&CK framework effectively by integrating it with an automated breach and attack simulation (BAS) tool, like the AttackIQ Security Optimization Platform. This approach allows security teams to regularly mimic the attacks that pose the most significant risk to them.
By collaborating, red and blue teams can create a comprehensive testing plan, collectively pinpoint errors and vulnerabilities in security controls, implement corrective actions, and subsequently reevaluate to confirm the effectiveness of their security measures. Thus, purple teaming contributes to a threat-informed defence strategy, emphasising the importance of preparing for known threats and assessing security controls against actual adversarial tactics.
10. SureCloud
Website: https://www.surecloud.com/
SureCloud’s Purple-Team cyber-attack simulation service employs scenarios from the real world, intelligence on threats, and a mix of physical, network, and social engineering tactics to pinpoint potential vulnerabilities within your organisation.