For a stronger and more robust cybersecurity strategy, you may want to conduct exercises. You can run up-to-date antivirus software, and you can regularly scan your business’s systems and network for threats, but that’s not always enough to prevent cyber attacks from occurring. There are certain exercises you can conduct, however, to catch threats that would otherwise go unnoticed. A red team and blue team exercise, for instance, can help you identify more threats.
What Is a Red Team?
A red team is a group of cybersecurity professionals who roleplay as attackers. They are used in red team and blue team exercises. Red team and blue team exercises consist of two parties. The former party consists of cybersecurity professionals who roleplay as attackers. In other words, they place themselves in the shoes of a typical attacker while attempting to breach systems and networks.
What Is a Blue Team?
A blue team is a group of cybersecurity professionals who roleplay as defenders. Their job is to protect the targeted systems and networks from being breached. Blue teams are essentially incident response teams. A cyber attack is an incident. Incident response teams seek to mitigate and stop cyber attacks. A blue team is simply a group of defenders who respond to incidents during a cybersecurity training exercise.
Differences Between Red and Blue Teams
When conducting a red team and blue team exercise, you’ll need two groups of cybersecurity professionals. The attacking group is the red team, whereas the defending group is the blue team.
Red teams and blue teams both consist of cybersecurity professionals; they simply have different objects. Red teams strive to breach systems and networks. Blue teams strive to protect the targeted systems and networks.
Reasons to Conduct Red Team and Blue Team Exercises
Why should you conduct red team and blue team exercises exactly? It can help you identify gaps in cybersecurity. Gaps are weaknesses that aren’t covered by an existing cybersecurity safeguard. Antivirus software, for example, may create gaps for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. With red team and blue team exercises, you can identify and plug these gaps.
Red team and blue team exercises can improve the skills of cybersecurity professionals. They help cybersecurity professionals learn new techniques for preventing and neutralizing cyber attacks.
You can also outsource red team and blue team exercises. Some businesses perform these exercises internally by assigning information technology (IT) specialists to red teams or blue teams. Other businesses outsource these cybersecurity training exercises.