Blue Teams are specifically charged with defending an organization against cyber threats. They are well-read in the business processes and outcomes they defend and (should) work closely with IT Operations to ensure they enact the correct controls in alignment with mission needs. They should have commensurate familiarity with the architecture they defend as a matter of necessity. Blue Teams are specialists in detecting, investigating, and resolving anomalous behavior and out-of-the-ordinary events in an IT infrastructure. They execute their mission through a variety of disciplines and continuously work to harden their posture.
Red Teams emulate cyber threats in a carefully targeted fashion to test an organization’s defenses against truly malicious actors, but without all the inconvenient data theft, loss of institutional credibility, and/or catastrophic business disruption. By nature, they are deeply threat-informed, and pair that knowledge with a “Red” mindset—one that’s inherently devious, tricky, and subversive, always thinking laterally and trying to figure out how to break things. Red Teams are Threat Emulation Specialists, able to adapt threat intelligence reports and/or sample code into safe, workable emulations that realistically test defenders and defenses.
Purple Teaming couples and coordinates red and blue to maximize the capabilities and impact of both. It aligns the blue team’s mission focus with relevant threats, allowing them to base defensive architectures on Business Critical needs. It applies “Red” thinking to carefully balanced and curated enterprises to show (not tell) stakeholders how their most critical capabilities can be compromised and give clear guidance on defending them. Fundamentally, Purple Teaming offers operators and analysts the means to align detection to threats in a structured way.
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