Blue Team Exercise Services

What is a Blue Team Exercise?

The red versus blue team security exercise is one of the best practices within the cybersecurity industry.

When assessing a system’s security processes. Much inspiration for this exercise was drawn from the military-developed “wargames” model, in which two opposing teams are subjected to various simulations and are tasked to either breach or defend a corporation’s security systems. The red team typically comprises technology professionals with a background in ethical hacking, whereby they will act as imaginary malicious attackers seeking to identify and exploit any flaws within a given security system (via ransomware, for instance). Meanwhile, the blue team is responsible for adhering to company protocols and policies to strengthen as well as patch up any defects in the information technology (IT) infrastructure in order to deter any escalation of attacks across the entire network. In essence, the main objective of the blue team is to protect all electronic assets (for example, proprietary databases, private and confidential information) owned by an organisation, regardless of whether it is hosted internally (i.e., on-premise) or externally (i.e., cloud-hosted).

That being said, blue team exercises are essentially the performance of all security operations centre (SOC) functions across multiple simulated cybersecurity threats to evaluate the blue team’s competence at detecting, preventing, and mitigating any forms of security breaches. Upon completion of the blue team exercise, the red team will reveal their attack strategies and tactics, whilst the blue team will take note of these data points to evaluate their defence mechanisms. Thus, this simulation enables the blue team to pinpoint vulnerable areas within a business network so that they are able to make the necessary improvements to their system. As a result, similar attacks in the future will have a much lower chance of succeeding again.

On the other hand, in certain scenarios, the red and blue teams may interact closely with each other during attack simulations to evaluate the blue team’s defence strategy as well as advise them on ways to manage the security breaches if they are facing any challenges. Simply put, this form of exercise is best known as purple team exercises. Another important aspect to take note of is that the red teams are usually third-party organisations employed on a contractual basis to examine the strength of a company’s security network by challenging any present weaknesses. Conversely, blue teams are often the in-house IT professionals who work in 24/7 shifts to protect the company’s digital assets at all times. They generally possess an inside-out perspective of the organisation and help to defend the company against all cyber-intruders.

Why Do Businesses Need Blue Team Assessments?

Investing in performing blue team exercises is vital to ensure that a company’s security system is rarely prone to malicious external attacks.

In particular, the adversarial nature of managing a cybersecurity threat provides the internal defence team with invaluable training and team-building opportunity on top of an exercise that cultivates a competitive drive to build even more advanced defence networks. Meanwhile, the act of studying, refining, and testing company security networks prompt the development of cutting-edge cybersecurity systems in preparation for any advanced threats in the future.

How is a Blue Team Exercise Conducted?

Blue team members are in charge of looking out for any security breaches and responding to them should such attacks be spotted.

For blue team members, the job scope comprises studying the current security systems established by the organization and proactively implementing the necessary changes to address any recognised vulnerabilities and flaws.

Crucial Skills for a Blue Team

Blue Team Exercise Best Practices

To conduct a successful blue team exercise, Mindfire’s cyber security experts undertake these critical steps within the project methodology: