Purple Teaming in Cybersecurity: 101
Purple Teaming in Cybersecurity: 101
Due to differences in attitudes, objectives, and tactics, many organizations’ blue and red teams keep their distance from one another. An increasingly widespread cybersecurity engagement—purple teaming—tries to bring these disparate teams into closer alignment. Read on to get the lowdown on what purple teaming in cybersecurity is, examples of purple team exercises, and best practices for purple teaming.
What is a Purple Team in Cybersecurity?
Purple teaming in cybersecurity is a collaborative effort between offensive (red team) and defensive (blue team) security groups. The primary goal of a purple team exercise is to improve the effectiveness of security measures by having both teams develop more supportive and cooperative relationships.
Purple teaming fosters improved communication and increased information flow to overcome the siloed, competitive dynamic that usually exists between red and blue teams. One way this increased collaboration manifests, compared with typical red team vs. blue team scenarios, is that the blue team is aware of the purple team exercise before it starts.
Aside from the differing objectives of traditional red and blue teams, the adversarial dynamic between the two stems from other factors, such as:
Perception of criticism: Blue teams might perceive the findings of the red team as criticism of their work or their ability to defend the organization, and vice versa. This perception sometimes leads to a reluctance to collaborate.
Skewed resource allocation: If management gives more resources or attention to one team over the other based on the perceived value to the company of their work, it can lead to internal rivalries.
Differing skill sets and terminologies: Red and blue teams have distinct skill sets, use various specialized tools unique to their work, and speak their own lingo. Without mutual training or knowledge exchange, misunderstandings easily emerge on top of a lack of appreciation for each other's roles.
Purple team activities take place in an environment that sees teams working together rather than in isolation from each other. Building a purple team for cybersecurity does not necessarily require new hires. For periodic exercises, leveraging existing resources and skillsets suffices.
Purple teaming in cybersecurity does not mean eliminating red or blue teams. Both teams still perform their separate functions. Instead, it’s about developing a structure for a threat-informed security mindset that spans across these distinct teams and functions.
Examples of Purple Team Activities
Some examples of collaborative purple team activities include:
Tabletop exercises: Discussion-based sessions where the teams walk through various cyber attack scenarios and discuss detection, mitigation, and response strategies. These sessions provide a way to understand how both teams would react to certain situations without actively simulating an attack. Conversations and insights might focus on particular attack phases, detections, and defensive actions.
Attack path mapping: Together, both teams analyze and map out potential attack paths that adversaries might use to breach your organization's defenses. This joint exercise helps in understanding risks, improving defenses, and developing detection strategies. Attack path mapping is particularly useful for understanding and mitigating risks to today’s expanding attack surfaces. As companies support hybrid work and open up more points of entry to their IT ecosystems, it’s vital to understand and defend the various paths threat actors can take in their attacks.
Joint training sessions: Both teams participate in training sessions where they share knowledge about the latest attack techniques, defensive strategies, tools, and best practices. The red team can educate the blue team about the latest attack methods they've used or discovered, and the blue team can share detection and mitigation methods with the red team.
Simulated cyber attacks: The red team performs realistic cyber attacks on your environment or on a cyber range that emulates your environment while the blue team tries to detect and respond to these attacks. The purpose of simulated attacks is to test and validate defenses and response procedures in a controlled way. Introducing opportunities for real-time feedback is key here.
Purple Team Best Practices
Before starting a purple team exercise, establish clear goals. Whether you're trying to validate controls, test incident response, or assess vulnerabilities, a clear objective sets the direction.
Instead of occasional purple team exercises, establish regular sessions to ensure continuous improvement and adaptation to the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. One way to do this is through Cloud Range’s cyber range program, which includes full administration and facilitation of multiple scenarios.
Create a range of attack scenarios from common threats to advanced persistent threats (APTs) to prepare for a wide array of potential attacks.
Use real-world threat intelligence to help inform your purple team exercises and make any scenarios as realistic as possible.
While technical vulnerabilities in apps or network security are essential to address, also consider other areas like physical security, social engineering, and insider threats in your purple team exercises.
Use established frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK to guide your purple team exercises. These frameworks provide detailed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that adversaries might use, which allows you to test defensive security teams and enable them to better respond to known attacks. The Cyber Kill Chain framework is another one to consider.
Design scenarios relevant to your organization's industry, size, and technology stack. Tailor purple team exercises to the specific risks your organization faces.
If you're leveraging external red teams for your security exercises and assessments, develop a framework for closer collaboration and feedback between teams.
Review and update security controls based on any findings and recommendations documented in purple team exercises.
The Value of Live-Fire Cyber Ranges in Purple Teaming
Simulated attacks are often the most valuable type of purple team exercise to perform, but a shared environment is essential to bring red and blue teams in closer alignment. Cyber attack simulation platforms and cyber ranges play a pivotal role in facilitating effective purple teaming by providing a controlled environment where you can run simulated attacks while facilitating collaboration between red and blue teams.
Many platforms come with dashboards that display the status of simulated attacks, vulnerabilities exploited, and defensive responses. This visual representation fosters understanding and discussions between teams.
Automated documentation and reporting ensure that both teams can review the results of simulated attacks, understand the findings, and strategize on improvements. A shared report promotes transparent communication and learning.
Cloud Range provides a world-class, realistic cyber range as a service for purple team engagements. Our cloud-based cyber range platform comes with access to expert live instructors, customizable environments, an extensive library of attack scenarios, and actionable reporting.