Red Teaming

Top 5 Cybersecurity Red Team Service Providers

Red Team Services

Cybersecurity is a never-ending journey considering the rising threat of cyberattacks with technological advancements. Therefore, it is essential for organizations to continuously test their security programs in a more thorough and precise way. One such assessment process gaining rapid popularity for its effective outcomes is the red teaming assessment. This assessment approach rigorously tests the strength of an organization’s security culture with targeted objectives from an adversary’s perspective. So, this article provides a quick overview of red teaming and lists the top 5 cybersecurity red team service providers you can choose from.

What is Red Teaming?

Red teaming, or red team assessment, is a practice involving a group of experts or ethical hackers authorized to stimulate a real-world adversary’s attack to test and challenge an organization’s security posture. Driven by specific objectives, the group pretends to be an enemy, mimics the real-world cyber attacker’s actions/behaviors, and deploys several tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to exploit potential weaknesses and penetrate the targeted organization’s systems, networks, and infrastructure.

The red team precisely crafts scenarios that closely resemble threat actors. The team uses a combination of social engineering, phishing, and other sophisticated methods to slowly but eventually gain unauthorized access. Overall, the goal of the red team is to use the comprehensive and dynamic approach to identify gaps and weaknesses, evaluate the effectiveness of existing security controls, and provide actionable insights to organizations to strengthen their defenses.

How is Red Teaming Different from Penetration Testing?

Red teaming and penetration testing are both security assessment techniques that stimulate an attack on an organization’s security infrastructure to test its strength and identify vulnerabilities. However, both differ in their approach, scope, and objectives.

Penetration testing is a practice where the testers use different tools and techniques to identify vulnerabilities in the organization’s IT infrastructure. The main objective of penetration testing is to identify as many possible vulnerabilities in a system, network, or application in a short time period. Therefore, it mostly follows a predefined and structured methodology to target vulnerabilities.

In contrast, red teaming is more complex technically. It mimics a real-life attacker with no time limitations and implements a thorough and deep exercise of testing the security posture. The main objective of red team assessment is to eventually gain access to a specific data, folder, or system, as pre-determined by the organization’s internal team. Therefore, the red team assessment is designed specifically for the test objective, where the group deploys all attacker-intended tactics on the organization’s internal security personnel and controls to achieve the objective no matter the duration of the attack.

Overall, red teaming is more holistic compared to penetration testing, as it tests the strength of an organization’s security culture, not just its systems.

Top 5 Cybersecurity Red Team Service Providers

Now that we have cleared about concepts around red teaming and its effectiveness over penetration testing, let’s highlight the best five cybersecurity red team service providers you can choose from:

1.     Redbot Security

First on our list and the top contender for the Red team service provider is Redbot Security. Known for its exceptional expertise and commitment to delivering unparalleled results, Redbot Security offers the most comprehensive and powerful red team services.

Redbot Security’s Red Team Security Exercise (RTSE) process meticulously crafts a real-world exercise, strategically honing the organization’s capacity to effectively identify, track, isolate, and remediate potential breaches. It incorporates a multi-phased comprehensive red team assessment approach involving intelligence gathering, external operations, internal operations, onsite operations (optional), and reporting. Below are the key features of Redbot Security red team service:

  • Custom scoping tailored as per specific environment and objectives.
  • Complete Proof of Concept, demonstrating manual testing efforts along with a detailed storyboard of findings to provide comprehensive insights.
  • Multiple spear-phishing engagements with active payloads.
  • Comprehensive external, internal, and onsite operations to detect and exploit vulnerabilities from various attack vectors.
  • Accurate replication of real-world cyber threats.
  • Non-stop collaboration with the organization’s internal team.
  • Detailed reporting with actionable recommendations.
  • Access to other additional services, such as network/application penetration testing, OT network (SCADA/ICS) testing, cloud security, etc.

In short, Redbot Security’s commitment to delivering state-of-the-art services and offering a highly-skilled red team makes it stand out as a leading and one of the best cybersecurity red team service providers.

2.     Synopsys

Synopsys is another reputed name in the cybersecurity red team services list. It is known for its intelligent real-world adversary tests to reflect the organization’s capability to withstand a real-life attack. Its red teaming service provides organizations with a clear understanding of their security posture and strength against defending specific assets from threat actors.

Synopsys’s red team uses a wide range of composite attack vectors to identify exploitable security holes. The red team chains together cross-domain or seemingly separate vulnerabilities to get a holistic view of team behavior, software, networks, applications, etc. Below are the key features of Synopsys’s red team service:

  • Simulates real-world targeted attacks.
  • Wide range of attack surfaces, such as penetration testing, social engineering, reconnaissance, etc.
  • Looks and uncovers various risks such as sensitive data written to log files, encryption keys in source code, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), etc.
  • Strategic recommendations to focus on risk areas and further improvements.

In short, Synopsys’s red team service is another effective and powerful service for organizations to test out their security strengths and improve their security posture.

3.     CyberArk

CyberArk red team specializes in adversary simulations where the company’s skilled, ethical hackers think and attack like expert attackers to find all potential loopholes. They exploit an organization’s hybrid and cloud environments, processes, DevOps pipelines, and all other critical systems that attackers can attack.

The CyberArk red team uses different types of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to deploy all means used by attackers to uncover known/unknown threats/vulnerabilities, test existing security practices, and identify areas of improvement. Below are the key features of CyberArk red team service:

  • Deploys all means necessary, just like attackers do, to test an organization’s security posture.
  • Collaborates with the organization’s internal team to determine the program goals.
  • A two-part report detailing an executive summary of the assessment and technical analysis to reflect issues and recommendations.

In short, CyberArk is another trustworthy red team services provider that can help organizations uncover vulnerabilities and improve their threat detection and response capabilities.

4.     Redscan

Redscan offers a dedicated team of red team operations experts that follows a methodical and comprehensive approach to thoroughly evaluate an organization’s capabilities in detecting and responding to threats. They leverage the latest tools and techniques of hacking to simulate a customized cyber attack to test an organization’s security robustness.

Redscan deploys the “no holds barred approach” to achieve the testing objective. The team starts with collecting information about the target for a successful compromise. Afterward, the experts stage the attacks according to the identified vulnerabilities. Once done, the team initiates the attack and tries to obtain a foothold of the target network. After successfully obtaining a foothold, the team goes for more internal compromise. This way, Redscan ensures a thorough assessment and provides a comprehensive final report. Below are the key features of Rescan red team service:

  • Uses a wide range of intelligence-led evasion, deception, and stealth techniques
  • Customized assessment according to the agreed objective.
  • A high-level overview of the whole assessment.
  • Detailed technical feedback.

In short, Redscan’s highly expert team of ethical hackers and multi-blended attack methods make it another best cybersecurity red team service provider.

5.     Stage 2 Security

Stage 2 Security provides Red Team-as-a-Service (RTaaS) service to organizations for comprehensive and continuous assessment of their entire IT infrastructure. Whether an organization wants to conduct red team assessment for cloud, web applications, IoT, insider threat, or external threat, RTaaS covers everything.

S2 RTaaS helps organizations have a personalized red team that facilitates continuous adversary emulation, focusing on achieving mission objectives, such as external attack surface management (EASM), ransomware attack surface testing (RAST), etc. The team uses stealthy lateral movement techniques to move laterally within the environment to accomplish the objectives. The team even allows organizations to request focused engagements to fulfill specific engagement needs. Below are the key features of S2 RTaaS:

  • Deploys human-validated, real-world attackers’ techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTPs).
  • Customizes phishing exercises to closely emulate adversary tactics to test the weakest link.
  • Provides findings about vulnerabilities through images or video demonstrations.
  • Provide continuous training to the Blue Team.

In short, S2 RTaaS provides a non-stop adversary emulation that organizations need to keep their security posture up-to-date.

Wrapping Up

Red teaming is a valuable assessment approach to enhance an organization’s overall cybersecurity resilience. Owing to that, it is increasingly recognized as a crucial component of proactive cybersecurity strategies. Therefore, if your organization is also looking to test the strength of its security landscape, then you can choose any of the above services for red team assessment. Out of all the above services, Redbot Security seems the best choice, as its exceptional expertise, comprehensive multi-phased approach, customized scenarios, advanced techniques, and non-stop collaboration make it a clear winner in the industry.

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