What is purple teaming
Threat actors are getting smarter, and traditional red-blue team silos leave blind spots. Purple teaming bridges the gap by offering a more integrated approach, combining offensive expertise with defensive implementation to create a more comprehensive security strategy. Purple teaming isn’t just a technical exercise; it’s a strategic investment in your security posture. When done correctly, it delivers many benefits across detection, collaboration, and culture.
Beyond the terminology, what does purple teaming actually look like in practice, and how can it transform your security operations from reactive measures to proactive protection?
Blending of red and blue
Red teams focus on the offensive side, simulating real-world attackers. Their role is to imitate how a threat actor might breach defenses, achieve specific objectives, and often remain concealed.
In contrast, blue teams are defensive. They monitor threats, respond to incidents, and work to protect the organization’s systems and data.
Purple teaming integrates these two perspectives, yet not everyone interprets it similarly. For some, it is merely a red team exercise followed by a review: the red team attacks while the blue team attempts to detect them. If the defenders manage to identify something, the assumption is that purple teaming has occurred.
A collaborative approach
At its best, purple teaming isn’t just a sequence of tasks, but a focused, hands-on collaboration. Instead of separate teams reviewing each other’s work, think of it as an ongoing dialogue where defenders and attackers team up to strengthen your security from all angles.
Our team values collaborative, in-depth discussions. This can involve sitting side by side with team members, guiding them through tactics step by step. Whether you’re connecting over Teams or sitting around the same table, the goal stays the same: open collaboration and learning together.
The goal isn’t just to see if the blue team can detect the red team. It’s to strengthen detection capabilities, refine understanding, and close the loop between offence and defence.
Key benefits of going purple
- Enhanced detection capabilities: One of the most immediate gains is the enhancement of detection mechanisms. Since the red team is sharing precisely what they’re doing and when, the blue team can correlate activities with real-time alerts, logs, and monitoring data. This insight helps tune detection rules and signatures, identify blind spots in monitoring systems, and understand which attacks fly under the radar and why. Purple teaming helps blue teams to recognize issues in real time and facilitate improvements accordingly.
- Faster feedback loops: Traditional red team exercises can take weeks or months, and it may take even longer for blue teams to receive detailed feedback. Purple teaming dramatically shortens this cycle. With both teams working in sync, feedback is continuous and iterative. If something isn’t detected, changes can be made on the spot. Success can be analyzed and documented immediately. This facilitates faster refinement of tools, tactics, and procedures, making the overall security function more agile and responsive.
- Realistic, high-fidelity simulations: Purple teaming often emulates specific threat actors or attack chains, unlike abstract tabletop exercises or isolated penetration tests. These are not random attacks; they are deliberate, structured scenarios based on real-world threats, including the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by nation-state or advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. This realism is crucial as it ensures your defenses are tested against adversaries’ actual techniques, not merely theoretical ones.
- Enhanced collaboration between teams: Purple teaming promotes a significant cultural shift. Red and blue teams, which often function in isolation or even in competition, come together. This collaboration fosters trust, empathy, and shared understanding. Red team members develop an understanding of the pressures and limitations faced by defenders. Blue team members gain insights into the mindsets and strategies of attackers. This mutual visibility fosters improved communication and enhances teamwork, which can extend into daily operations beyond the exercise.
- Clarity over ambiguity: By discussing everything openly and frequently in real time, there is significantly less ambiguity regarding what occurred, what was observed, and what was effective. This clarity helps to identify meaningful improvements and prevent the finger-pointing or vague conclusions that sometimes accompany traditional testing.
- Stronger security culture: Ultimately, purple teaming fosters a mindset of continuous improvement. It promotes curiosity, transparency, and a collective sense of purpose. Instead of focusing solely on scoring points or outsmarting the other team, everyone collaborates to enhance the organization’s security. This cultural shift can be as significant as any technical fix, laying the groundwork for a more mature and resilient security organization.
Purple teaming isn’t a fixed methodology; it’s a mindset that encourages transparency, learning, and constant improvement. While different organizations may interpret it uniquely, the approach’s core lies in collaboration.
As threats evolve, breaking down barriers between red and blue teams could provide the edge your organization needs.
