What is a Red Team in an organization?

A red team is a group of specialized individuals who play the role of a potential attacker (hacker, cybercriminal, or competitive entity).

The red team simulates adversarial attacks or scenarios against an organization’s system, processes, networks or infrastructures to identify vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and gaps in security, resilience, or decision-making processes that may not be obvious or clear to the organization’s own defenders.

The tactics used for such activities can vary: penetration tests, social engineering campaigns, or physical security assessments.

Red team skills

A) Technical skills:

• network security
• system administration
• cryptography
• web application security
• cloud security
• solid understanding of cybersecurity principles, best practices, common attack vectors
• knowledge of common vulnerabilities and exploits
• malware analysis
• threat intelligence
• defensive techniques

B) Soft / human skills:

• understanding the adversarial mindset: motivations, goals, behaviors
• social engineering skills: phishing (and its variations), pretexting, manipulation tactics
• strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills
• ability to adapt strategies to changing circumstances
• writing clear and concise reports
• commitment to ongoing learning and professional development
• understand the boundaries of the red team role

Red team roles:

• Red Team Specialist
• Red Team Analyst
• Red Team Lead
• Red Team Consultant
• Red Team Engineer
• Red Team Security Architect
• Offensive Security Specialist
• Penetration Tester
• Cyber Threat Emulation Specialist
• Adversarial Simulation Analyst
• Ethical Hacker

Looking to be part of a Red Team? Train on CyberEDU!

You can participate in CTFs organized by and on the CyberEDU platform.

Before you begin, we recommend these top 3 challenges for training:

• blindsight (category: pwn | level: hard)
• para-code (category: web | level: easy)
• holy-book (this one’s special)