The Red Team Chronicles is a hacker comic that this month is looking at the endeavors of Jason Haddix and how he and his team got access to a bank via a shred bin using some thrifty techniques.

Despite investing in costly security solutions, keeping up with patches, and educating employees about suspicious emails, breaches still occur, leaving many organizations to wonder why they are vulnerable and which security areas need improvement.

During my time delivering red team engagements over the last few years, I've had the luxury of working with organisations who’re just starting out with their red teaming approaches, all the way up to battling hardened and heavily monitored networks. In this experience, I’ve found that one of the key areas that makes or breaks a successful operation is the scoping, sizing and planning of an engagement. It can often be daunting to explore more threat-led and realistic testing approaches.

Organizational red teams are tasked with the critical responsibility of ensuring preparedness against real-world threats. But the ability to accurately replicate complex threat behavior can often be resource-intensive, expensive, and difficult to operationalize. As sophisticated threat actors continue to evolve their attack patterns, replicating this rapidly changing behavior can become nearly impossible.

To defend against rapidly evolving cyber threats, businesses need to continually adapt and innovate. This means that red and blue teams must work together on an ongoing basis to maximise their individual and collective impact. Purple teaming allows them to achieve this more effectively, significantly advancing organisations’ security posture.