The Things You Don’t Know About Purple Teaming
You’ve heard of red teaming and blue teaming. But have you heard of purple teaming? Even the colour theory novices among us will know that red and blue make purple- so you may be able to hazard a guess what purple teaming entails.
You guessed it – Purple teaming refers to a new team construct that fosters collaboration between red and blue teams for more robust cybersecurity practice. But although it seems simple, there’s more to purple teaming than first meets the eye.
The Best of Both Worlds (Without the Finger Pointing)
By holistically looking at processes, information flows, and cycles, teams are able to minimise the limitations of red and blue teams performing their duties in a siloed manner.
In a purple teaming structure, a red or blue team isn’t eliminated. Teams aren’t fully integrated either. The blue and red teams continue to perform their separate functions but introduce a new level of communication and collaboration that spans both parties’ functions.
The end result? A shared, ‘offence/defence’ mindset that improves cybersecurity effectiveness. No more blaming another team when problems arise. In purple teaming, there are shared goals between the two parties, eliminating scapegoating, finger-pointing and resentment.
MITRE ATT&CK and Purple Teaming – A Match Made in Heaven
The best way for purple teams to organise their testing is by utilising the MITRE ATT&CK framework of adversarial Tactics, Techniques and Procedures. It’s a “periodic table” of the global threat landscape that purple teams can use to think like adversaries and run continuous tests.
From there, teams are able to prioritise investments, assessments, and future planning. Using the MITRE ATT&CK framework, Purple teams can work as one to design testing plans, find security control errors and gaps together, mitigate risks as a tightly aligned team, and stand up as a true threat-informed defence.
Automation is Key for Effective Purple Teaming
Manual, infrequent testing isn’t enough. How can this kind of testing ensure control gaps aren’t opening up and going unnoticed? Simply put – it can’t. In order to prevent threats from slipping under the radar, continuous control testing and validation are imperative.
Teams benefit from real-time data and detailed reporting. This is made possible with the use of a breach and attack simulation (BAS) platform that can emulate adversarial threats and in turn, validate the effectiveness of security controls on a continuous basis.
Beyond this, automation can save teams time, money, and headaches.
Helps Navigation of Cloud Security Controls
Organisations have made a mad dash to the cloud. The problem? Not everyone has a sound strategy in place for how to secure their cloud. Fortunately, purple teaming can help here, too.
You understand as a team which cloud security controls you have, what they’re able to do—and how to apply them to protect your organisation. Purple teams can map cloud controls to threat behaviour and increase their cybersecurity readiness, and then consistently test security control effectiveness through threat emulation.
With purple teaming, the cloud becomes a much less scary place.
Purple Reign-s Supreme
By no means is this an exhaustive description of purple teaming or its benefits to your business. But I hope this article gave you a deeper insight into the power of going Purple.
However, there is still so much more to be said.
You know what they say- Rome wasn’t built in a day. And the same sentiment applies here. Properly building a purple team will take more than just a leisurely read of this article.
But don’t worry. That doesn’t mean it has to be difficult either.
There are great resources available to you and if you want to learn more about how you can build the perfect purple team – reach out. I’ll happily point you in the right direction.
