Red Teaming

Red teaming is a full-scope adversarial security assessment in which a team of ethical hackers attempts to compromise your organisation using real-world attacker techniques – targeting technology, people and physical security simultaneously, with no predefined scope and no advance warning to defenders. It is designed to answer the question: could a determined, sophisticated attacker achieve their objective, and would your security team detect and respond?

Penetration testing is a structured assessment with a defined scope, agreed rules of engagement and a focus on finding vulnerabilities within specific systems. Red teaming has no predefined scope – the red team operates covertly, targeting any weakness they can exploit across people, processes and technology, with the goal of achieving a specific objective rather than enumerating vulnerabilities. Pen testing is typically shorter and compliance-driven; red teaming is longer, covert and focused on testing real-world detection and response capability. The two are complementary – most organisations benefit from regular pen testing before progressing to red team engagements.

The Cyber Kill Chain is a framework developed by Lockheed Martin that describes the stages of a sophisticated cyber attack – from initial reconnaissance through to data exfiltration and post-exploitation. CyberLab’s red team engagements are structured across an 8-step Kill Chain: reconnaissance and target identification, weaponisation and infrastructure setup, delivery and initial compromise, privilege escalation and lateral movement, command and control, actions on objectives, persistence and egress, and reporting and debrief.

A purple team exercise is a collaborative session in which the red team and blue team work together – the red team executes specific attack techniques while the blue team attempts to detect and respond in real time. Unlike a traditional red team engagement where the blue team is unaware, purple teaming is a learning exercise designed to improve detection rules, response playbooks and security awareness. CyberLab offers an optional purple team debrief as part of every red team engagement.

TIBER-EU (Threat Intelligence-Based Ethical Red Teaming) is the European framework for red team testing of critical financial infrastructure, developed by the European Central Bank. It is one of the most rigorous adversarial testing frameworks available and is required or recommended by several EU financial regulators. CBEST is the UK equivalent, administered by the Bank of England. CyberLab’s red team consultants have direct experience delivering TIBER-EU and CBEST-aligned engagements for regulated UK financial services organisations.

Red teaming is most valuable for organisations that already conduct regular penetration testing and have a mature security posture with established detection and response capability. It is particularly relevant for regulated financial services organisations, critical national infrastructure operators, large enterprises with sensitive data and organisations that want to validate their security investments against real-world attack scenarios. If you are new to security testing, penetration testing is the right starting point – speak with our team to discuss where you are in your security maturity journey.

Red team engagements typically run from four to twelve weeks depending on the scope, objectives and complexity of the target environment. Unlike penetration tests which are measured in days, red teaming requires sufficient time for the team to operate covertly and realistically simulate an advanced persistent threat. CyberLab will scope the duration of your engagement based on your specific objectives during the planning phase.

Social engineering in a red team context refers to the use of deception, manipulation and pretexting to gain access to systems, facilities or information through human targets rather than technical exploitation. This includes phishing and spear-phishing email campaigns, vishing (voice phishing), physical pretexting (such as impersonating a contractor or delivery driver), and tailgating into secured facilities. Social engineering is a core component of CyberLab’s red team engagements – as demonstrated by our tailgating case study – because it is one of the most effective real-world attack techniques and one that purely technical testing cannot assess.