Red Team Assessment
Evaluate your organization’s current security capabilities by undergoing a holistic test
of your business’ cybersecurity practices and current security controls.
By working with your organisation to understand the security concerns most relevant to your sector and
business, our red team will design a targeted assessment that truly challenges your ability to detect, respond,
and prevent sophisticated, persistent and targeted threats.
The Importance of a Red Team Assessment
Performing a red team assessment will help you understand your immediate threat profile and how well your current protocols and procedures would defend against a real-world attack.
- Assess Security Processes and Controls – A red team assessment provides assurance that your processes and controls are optimally configured, working as intended, and will remain secure in real-world threat scenarios.
- Worst-Case Scenario – Companies lack a true understanding of how their people, processes, and technologies would handle a worst-case threat scenario or whether critical business processes would remain operational if their business was compromised by a skilled adversary.
- Internal SOC Testing – Red team assessments provide an opportunity to train the business security operations center (SOC) with up-to-date approaches and processes that enable them to effectively respond to new and persistent threats.
What to Expect from a Red Team
Assessment by Bridewell
Bridewell does not provide an ‘off the shelf’ test and will only conduct an assessment after an extensive scoping
exercise has been completed that maximises value and results for your organisation.
Customised Engagements
We utilise real attack methods and cutting-edge techniques from threat actors relevant to your organisation, tailored to your current maturity.
A Real-Time Engagement
Assess your defensive playbooks and responses in a controlled, realistic test for your in-house or third-party SOC solutions.
Threat Driven Engagements
We offer a number of engagement types driven by our in-house cyber threat intelligence (CTI) service. This allows realistic simulations of attacks using up-to-date intel from threat actors operating in your business sectors.
Live Reporting and Updates
Our penetration testers provide real-time insight into key findings, culminating in a tailored report to address your specific goals from undertaking the assessment.
Detailed Washup Sessions
We will support and develop your blue team, providing detailed guidance on improving hunting, remediation, and detection capabilities.
Why is it Worth Conducting a Red Team Assessment?
A large financial organization engaged with Bridewell to provide a testing scenario that could simulate a real-world attack scenario.
Schedule a ConsultationHow we Conduct a Red Team Assessment
Initial Scoping & Quotation
Bridewell will work with your organisation to understand your individual business objectives and the range of potential threats and security risks. Using these, Bridewell will work with your organisation to identify the scope of the engagement and provide a quotation.
Detailed Scoping
In order to deliver an effective Red Team, the Red Team Lead, and all involved parties take part in a full scoping day to outline every important detail for the engagement.
Engagement Kick Off
Once the scope of the assessment has been agreed, Bridewell will begin the assessment. Bridewell will carry out the assessment over a defined period of time, in line with the agreed rules of engagement. They will aim to complete all objectives and goals within the defined timeframe.
Live Updates
Throughout the assessment, Bridewell’s Red Team will be in constant contact with the key contacts. This ensures the engagement is proceeding safely and securely and continues to deliver the expected results within the time frames.
Report & Analysis
Once the assessment has been completed, Bridewell will share a report with key stakeholders to provide a detailed analysis covering all aspects of the test in detail.
Live Debrief
Bridewell also provides a live debrief where the Red Team, who performed the assessment, can present their findings to key individuals and answer any questions they may have.
Customised Red Team Engagements
Beyond a typical Red Team Assessment, Bridewell can also provide engagements
featuring any combination of the following:
Assess your organisation’s defensive capabilities beyond the scope of a traditional penetration test by understanding the implications of an attacker bypassing your external perimeter.
Test your organisation’s defensive capabilities within the security perimeter by assessing your current protections and protocols for after a breach has occurred. In contrast to traditional assessments, which assume attackers come from well-placed internal attack hosts, an assumed breach test reviews the consequences of a user or devices already being compromised.
This assessment evaluates the potential impact of a compromised, low level user account in your organisation and how you can better protect against this scenario. This is a valuable addition to a traditional penetration test for organisations with mature environments with established vulnerability management and network security practices.
Understanding these vulnerabilities and remediating against them will help organisations defend against methods such as:
- Email attacks
- Drive by attacks
- Credential compromises.
A true evaluation of the effectiveness of your organisation’s chosen EDR, XDR and/ or endpoint protection systems.
Test the current level of protection your organisation is receiving through its chosen EDR and endpoint protection solutions. During the assessment, Bridewell’s penetration testing experts will assess the prevention and detection of numerous off-the-shelf commodity payloads and attack methods alongside more advanced methods.
Undergoing the assessment can help your organisation identify areas of the product that have been misconfigured and ensure you are utilising all functionality. Following the assessment, Bridewell will also provide recommendations on improving your configuration and performing maintenance to maximise your return on investment.
Identify key Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups operating in your sector and carry out targeted testing to evaluate the processes and procedures currently in place to defend against them.
Perform simulated attacks that incorporate the tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) used by leading APTs relevant to your organisation. By reproducing the methods likely to be used by attackers when targeting your business in a real-life scenario, your security teams can evaluate and improve their current defensive capabilities.
This helps them better understand, monitor for, and defend against the TTPs used by the APTs most relevant to your organisation. Additionally, it will help them develop hunting techniques to thwart real attacks should they occur.
Once completed, Bridewell will provide a final report detailing a complete timeline of the attack that can be used by your in house or 3rd Party SOC or SIEM to remediate against vulnerabilities identified during the assessment.
Identify potential worse case scenarios and carry out targeted testing to develop and evaluate the processes and procedures currently in place to protect your most valuable assets.
Identify, plan, and execute the highest risk attacks relevant to your organisation in a controlled manner with Bridewell’s trusted and highly certified penetration testers. By simulating Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) scenarios and other risks unique to your organisation, Bridewell can evaluate the capabilities of your existing cyber security practices and infrastructure.
These insights allow Bridewell to provide guidance and remediations that improve your security posture against these threats and mitigate risk if they were to occur in a real-life scenario. Given that these threats are often entirely unique to your organisation, Bridewell will work with you to identify the most relevant and incorporate them into the assessment. These could include anything from:
- Insider threat testing.
- Physical access and physical data or asset exfiltration.
- Financial system manipulation.
- Cloud administration compromise and lockout.
- Ransomware simulations.
- CEO system compromise.
Red Team Assessment FAQ's
A red team assessment is a form of testing in which a team of individuals simulates an adversary or attacker in order to test an organisation’s defences. The purpose of a red team assessment is to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the organisation’s security posture and to help the organisation improve its defences.
Red team assessments can be used to test a wide range of security controls and systems, including network and application security, physical security, and incident response plans and procedures. They can also be used to test the organisation’s defences against specific types of threats, such as nation-state cyber attacks, ransomware attacks, or phishing campaigns.
Overall, the purpose of a red team assessment is to help the organisation improve its security posture, protect itself against potential threats, and reduce the risk of a successful attack.
Red team assessments are typically carried out by a team of individuals who simulate an adversary or attacker in order to test an organisation’s defenses and evaluate their effectiveness. The team may be composed of a variety of professionals, including cybersecurity experts, network engineers, and IT professionals, as well as individuals with expertise in areas such as social engineering and physical security.
In addition to the red team, other individuals or groups may be involved in a red team assessment, depending on the scope of the assessment and the specific goals of the organisation. These may include:
- The organisation’s security team: The security team may be involved in planning and executing the red team assessment, as well as reviewing and analyzing the results.
- Internal stakeholders: Depending on the scope of the assessment, other internal stakeholders such as business unit leaders or HR may also be involved in the planning and execution of the assessment.
- External consultants: The organisation may also bring in external consultants to assist with the assessment, particularly if they have specialised expertise or experience with red teaming
Overall, the composition of the red team and the individuals or groups involved in the assessment will depend on the specific goals and objectives of the organisation and the scope of the assessment.
The results of a red team assessment can be used to improve an organisation’s security posture in several ways:
- Identifying vulnerabilities: A red team assessment can help the organisation identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in its defenses that could be exploited by an attacker. By identifying these vulnerabilities, the organisation can take steps to remediate them and reduce the risk of a successful attack.
- Testing the effectiveness of defenses: A red team assessment can help the organisation understand how well its defenses hold up against a simulated attack and identify areas where they are ineffective. This information can be used to improve defenses and make them more effective at protecting against real-world threats.
- Improving incident response: By simulating a cyber attack, a red team assessment can help the organisation test and improve its incident response plans and procedures. This can help the them respond more effectively to a real-world attack and minimise the impact of an incident.
- Enhancing employee awareness: A red team assessment can help raise awareness among employees about potential threats and how to identify and respond to them. This can the wider organisation improve its overall security posture by increasing the vigilance and awareness of its employees.
Overall, a red team assessment is a powerful tool for organisations to identify vulnerabilities, test the effectiveness of their defenses, improve incident response, and enhance employee awareness, all of which can help improve the organisation’s overall security posture.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The frequency assessments will vary depending on the specific needs of the organisation. Red Team engagements often operate over a longer time period (for example 3 months). So it may be prudent to have a single engagement a year or opt for a continual Red Team approach.
Why Us?
Accreditations and Certifications
We hold the most NCSC assured services of any cyber security services provider. Our cyber security consultants and services are globally
recognised for meeting the highest standards of accreditation and have leading industry certifications.
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