Cybersecurity is a colourful industry. You’ve probably heard references to a rainbow of different team colours, white hats, and black boxes. This article helps cut through some of the confusion and explain what each colour means, how they affect your organization, and how you can leverage them for your benefit.
Red, Blue, and Purple Teams
In cybersecurity, the terms red, blue, and purple are applied to teams that perform different functions to identify weaknesses within your infrastructure, setting the stage for you to be able to prioritize and mitigate those vulnerabilities.
- Red teams are often associated with “ethical hacking” and penetration testing. They simulate real-world attacks to identify security vulnerabilities within the organization, typically using a combination of automated testing tools along with human expertise to probe and expose potential network flaws before a malicious actor can do so. Red teams work at the behest of the organization being tested, but without the knowledge of internal teams: in this way, vulnerabilities can be identified while assessing the defensive alertness and effectiveness of the organization. Red team exercises and “pen tests” can vary in length. They can focus on a specific area of the network, attack a designated function or service, or they can comprise complete offensive security testing that probes from outside the network as well as from the inside.
- In contrast, a Blue team refers to the group of defensive security professionals – typically an in-house team – that is responsible for protecting an organization’s systems, networks, and data from cyber threats and attacks. In contrast to the red team, which simulates real-world attacks to identify vulnerabilities, Blue teams usually focus on implementing and managing security controls, monitoring for potential threats, and responding to incidents. Their primary responsibilities include securing critical assets, performing risk assessments, deploying defensive tools like firewalls and intrusion detection systems, analyzing logs and network traffic for suspicious activity, and developing incident response plans. Their goal is defensive security; ideally, they will be able to quickly identify and neutralize any tactics employed by a Red team to conduct an attack.
- Purple teams, consequently, are a combination of a Red team and a Blue team. Offensive security tactics are employed, but with the knowledge of the Blue team. In penetration test exercises conducted by Purple teams, the Blue team will be ready for advances made by a Red team. For example, they can communicate the types of logs or alerts that are being triggered by an external attack. This allows the Blue team to recognize and better prepare for certain types of attacks, while giving the Red team guidance as to where they may have tripped an alarm. In working together, the teams can refine and strengthen an organization’s defenses against adaptative threats.
Other “Colourful” Teams
Additional colourful nicknames for focused security groups have gained popularity in recent years as well. For example, Green teams may concentrate on testing an organization’s ability to respond to and recover from security incidents by conducting data breach or system outage simulations. Yellow teams are focused on identifying and mitigating risks related to security awareness – human factors like social engineering and insider threats. Meanwhile, Orange teams are dedicated to offensive security research, developing new attack techniques and tools to test an organization’s defenses against emerging threats.
White Hat / Black Hat Hackers
When you think of the archetypal hacker, you likely imagine a shadowy individual in a dark room wearing a hooded sweatshirt gazing intently at multiple screens. You can almost smell the Cheetos in the air! That’s the “black hat” hacker: the one who is looking to cause harm to your network or steal your data. Black hats are usually motivated by monetary gain, intentional disruption of services, and political activism.
However, there are ethical hackers as well – those whom we call white hat hackers. White hats are tasked with hacking target networks, but without malicious intent in mind. These are typically individuals engaged to identify and warn organizations about security vulnerabilities (often, but not necessarily, as part of a “Red team exercise”). However, white hats can also be self-motivated, looking to expose security weaknesses in organizations to enable them to address issues before a black hat can exploit them. White hat hackers include bug bounty program participants, internal penetration testers, and for-hire external penetration testers. White hats who act without the knowledge or consent of a target organization are sometimes called “grey hats” – they are acting with good intentions, but without authorization.
Black hats and white hats may even use the same tools and techniques to discover and leverage security flaws: the key differentiator is what they do with the knowledge they acquire.
White Box vs. Black Box Testing
Rounding out the colours of the cybersecurity industry are white box and black box penetration testing. When your externally hired penetration testers conduct their activities, the level of information they know about your network is considered either black, white, or grey.
- White box testing indicates the penetration testers have full knowledge of your network, and can use that knowledge to validate exploits and provide a proof of concept to how much damage can be done to your network and its users. White box testing often goes faster than other types of testing, but may not be as thorough as the testers don’t need to go through a “discovery” phase to identify potential targets.
- Black box testing refers to penetration testers knowing little to nothing about your network. While this testing may take longer, it has two key potential benefits:
- Starting with no information about your network offers a unique perspective of how attackers might infiltrate your environment in ways your security team may not have considered.
- Black box testing may highlight security weaknesses or gaps in ways that may have been previously unknown to your organization.
- Grey box testing is a mixture of white and black box testing, which indicates your penetration testers have some information about your network, but not a complete understanding. Grey box testing is often used when your organization wants to assess the security posture of specific network segments, specific services, or applications.
Benefits of Penetration Testing
A blend of offensive and defensive testing is the only way to truly understand how an attacker might infiltrate your network, what capabilities they might have, and how long it will take your security team to find them than simulate an attack.
Being proactive and conducting methodical penetration tests – and remediating any exposures – is always more cost-effective than being reactive and having to manage a data breach or ransomware incident. It is typically recommended to start your testing with a more open approach, with purple or blue exercises done collaboratively. Once your security programs and processes are mature enough to succeed in this kind of testing, you can graduate to stealthier red team exercises to challenge your teams.
To learn more about how the cybersecurity rainbow can help your organization improve its security posture, contact ISA Cybersecurity today.
