An explanation of purple teaming
In this video, Informa TechTarget assistant editor Tommy Everson explains what purple teaming is, how it works and why it's important for cybersecurity strategy.
Bring offense and defense together with purple teaming.
During cybersecurity exercises, security professionals are often divided into two teams: An offensive red team that simulates attackers by hacking company systems to find weaknesses, and a defensive blue team that focuses on monitoring systems, detecting and responding to attacks and protecting company systems.
For maximum security, organizations should use the collective knowledge of red and blue team members, a practice referred to as -- you guessed it -- purple teaming.
Here, we'll explain how purple teaming works and why it's effective.
Red teams consist of ethical hackers, penetration testers and other security analysts, while blue teams are made up of security operations center analysts, incident responders, cyberthreat hunters and other IT personnel.
Commonly, much of the teams' work is done separately, and each team is often reluctant to share its methods with the other. While some secrecy is necessary to maintain a realistic simulation, vulnerabilities will be overlooked if there's no communication between the teams.
That's why purple teaming is so important. It establishes collaboration between red and blue team members during and after the simulation, sharing their knowledge and resources to mitigate system vulnerabilities and strengthen their organization's security posture. Purple team debriefs could reveal compliance gaps, inadequate staff training or weak firewall settings, for example.
For purple teaming to be truly effective, it needs playbooks and a framework. A purple team framework usually involves similar steps to the NIST Incident Response Framework, including the following:
- Preparation.
- Detection and analysis.
- Containment, eradication and recovery.
- Post-incident activity.
While a framework details the structure and strategy for a security program, a playbook sums up the specific tools and processes for responding to security incidents.
Specifically, a purple team playbook outlines the steps that red and blue teams should take to simulate and defend against attacks. It details specific attack situations, such as phishing or ransomware; how the red team simulates the attack; and how the blue team responds to it. Once testing is complete, the two teams come together to analyze their findings.
Organizations can have several purple team playbooks based on different attack scenarios and each should be repeatable and reusable. Playbooks should also include assessments of the exercises run by each team, accounting for when and where vulnerabilities are discovered, any breach that has occurred and how the incident was managed.
Benefits of purple teaming include faster threat detection, collective skill building, cost-effective security improvements and a more structured security approach overall.
Does your organization use purple teaming? Have you ever been a purple team member? Share your experience in the comments, and remember to like and subscribe, too.
Tommy Everson is an assistant editor for video content at Informa TechTarget. He assists in content creation for Informa TechTarget's YouTube channel and TikTok page.
Sabrina Polin is a managing editor of video content for the Learning Content team. She plans and develops video content for Informa TechTarget's editorial YouTube channel, Eye on Tech. Previously, Sabrina was a reporter for the Products Content team.
Sharon Shea is executive editor of Informa TechTarget's SearchSecurity site.