Buyer’s Guide to Red Team Partnerships: Outsmarting Attackers Together
- Fayyaz Rajpari
- May 14
- 6 min read
Updated: May 28
What CIOs and CISOs need to know before introducing a Red Team vendor partnership.
Evaluating the Right Red Team Cybersecurity Services & Consulting Vendor
When selecting a Red Team cybersecurity services and consulting vendor, you’re looking for more than just technical expertise. The right partner will provide offensive security services that challenge your defenses, reveal vulnerabilities, and simulate real-world adversaries. IntelliGuards understands it’s crucial to find a vendor who aligns with your organization’s specific security technology goals, initiatives, and regulatory requirements while providing actionable insights to strengthen your defenses, that is why we have prepared a guide to support your vendor selection needs.
Key Factors to Consider When Evaluating Vendors
Offensive Security Expertise
Red Teaming requires advanced offensive security expertise. A good vendor should have proven experience in adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to simulate sophisticated attacks.
Tip: Ensure that the vendor’s team includes certified ethical hackers (e.g., OSCP, CEH, or CREST certifications) and professionals with experience in simulating the advanced persistent threat (APT).
Tailored Engagements
The best Red Team engagements are not cookie-cutter exercises. Your vendor should be able to customize their tactics to reflect the unique environment, challenges, and security needs of your organization.
Tip: Look for vendors who start with detailed reconnaissance of your environment and tailor their attacks to mimic real-world threats specific to your industry.
Alignment with Your Security Objectives
Your Red Team vendor should work with you to align testing with your overall security strategy. Whether you’re looking to test specific security controls or evaluate your incident response, their testing should serve your long-term goals.
Tip: Ensure the vendor can scale engagements based on your security maturity, whether it's a basic penetration test or a full-scale adversary simulation.
Reporting and Actionable Insights
Beyond just finding vulnerabilities, the vendor should provide detailed, actionable reporting. Their findings should be clear, prioritized, and include specific steps for remediation.
Tip: Request examples of past reports to ensure they provide executive summaries for stakeholders and technical details for your security team.
Post-Engagement Support
Red Team exercises are only effective if you can fix the issues found. The vendor should offer remediation guidance and retesting to ensure vulnerabilities are adequately addressed.
Tip: Ask about the vendor’s post-engagement services, such as helping your team implement recommended fixes or perform retests.
Continuous Improvement and Collaboration
The best Red Team vendors act as partners, helping you improve over time. They should provide iterative testing, continuously raising the bar and pushing your defenses to adapt and improve.
Tip: Look for vendors who offer long-term relationships that go beyond one-off tests, and instead support your security posture improvement over time.
Industry Experience and References
Red Team testing can vary significantly depending on your industry. Ensure that the vendor has experience working with similar organizations and is familiar with industry-specific regulations and threat models.
Tip: Request references and case studies from similar industries to validate their experience.
10 Key Questions To Ask When Evaluating Red Team Vendors
Before selecting a Red Team vendor, it’s essential to ask the right questions. The following questions will help you assess the vendor’s capabilities, methodologies, and the overall fit for your company.
What is your team’s experience with offensive security and Red Team engagements?
Why ask: Ensure the vendor has seasoned professionals with offensive security certifications and hands-on experience.
How do you tailor your Red Team engagements to align with our specific security goals and environment?
Why ask: Look for a vendor who doesn’t offer generic services but instead customizes their attack methodologies.
What types of attack scenarios do you typically simulate, and how do you ensure they reflect real-world threats?
Why ask: Make sure the vendor can create realistic adversarial scenarios based on your industry and threat landscape.
Can you provide examples of reports from previous engagements, including the level of detail and recommendations?
Why ask: It’s important to see how clear and actionable their reporting is, both for technical teams and executive leadership.
How do you assist with remediation, and do you offer retesting after vulnerabilities are addressed?
Why ask: Ensure the vendor offers post-engagement support and retest to validate that vulnerabilities have been fixed.
How do you handle sensitive data during testing, and what safeguards do you have in place to protect our environment?
Why ask: Make sure the vendor follows strict protocols to protect your data during the testing process.
How often do you recommend conducting Red Team exercises, and do you offer continuous improvement services?
Why ask: Look for a vendor who emphasizes regular testing to improve your defenses over time.
How do you integrate your testing with our existing blue team and security operations?
Why ask: Ensure the vendor has a plan for collaborating with your internal teams to enhance detection and response capabilities.
Can you share case studies or references from clients in similar industries?
Why ask: Validate their experience in your sector and their understanding of industry-specific threats.
What is your approach to measuring success, and how do you ensure our security improves after each engagement?
Why ask: Ensure that the vendor has a clear method for evaluating the effectiveness of their testing and your organization’s progress.
Questions to Ask When Evaluating Red Team Vendors
What is your team’s experience with offensive security and Red Team engagements?
Decades of research and cyber risk services experiences spanning across all areas of the attack surface (Virtual and physical)
How do you tailor your Red Team engagements to align with our specific security goals and environment?
During the discovery / scoping phase we identify the client’s security goals, target environments details and security compliance frameworks required to adhere to.
What types of attack scenarios do you typically simulate, and how do you ensure they reflect real-world threats?
Our goal is to simulate a malicious attacker by leveraging both traditional and non-traditional and novel attack paths which reflect the kind of TTPs seen in real-world attacks.
Can you provide examples of reports from previous engagements, including the level of detail and recommendations?
Yes, we provide sample reports for all the different types of simulated attacks we carry out in our assessments.
How do you assist with remediation, and do you offer retesting after vulnerabilities are addressed?
All of our Detailed Assessment Reports include detailed TTPs and methodology of the testing that was performed along with detailed remediation recommendations. Once the client completes remediation, we always provide complimentary remediation testing.
How do you handle sensitive data during testing, and what safeguards do you have in place to protect our environment?
We do not move, alter or export any client data. Sensitive information such as user credentials and target assets for testing are managed and shared via a secure file sharing platform like ShareFile.
How often do you recommend conducting Red Team exercises, and do you offer continuous improvement services?
We believe that red team exercises and services should be continuous, easy to access and affordable. Size of target environments and compliance requirements usually determine the frequency of Red Team services, but ideally cyber risk services should be performed at least on a quarterly basis.
How do you integrate your testing with our existing blue team and security operations?
PURPLE TEAM EXERCISES
The goal of the Purple Team Exercise is to test the capabilities and responses of the client’s “Blue Team” or network defenses during network attack with an attempt to breach the network by a threat actor. Purple teaming provides the client visibility in potential gaps with their monitoring and SOC response policies and deployment. The test reviews the capabilities of the client’s SIEM and how it responds to their specific environment with no outside analysts to monitor activity.
Our team can identify if their implementation is ineffective or if configurations need to be adjusted to increase the likelihood of the SIEM to function appropriately.
In the event the client does have an outside firm monitoring their logs and activity, this offering provides context as to whether that outside provider is handling events and incidents according to plan.
Our assessment team will engage with the client to help discover weakness in their network security to help identify cyber threats that should be caught and triaged by the blue team. We leverage the MITRE Attack framework for the purple team exercise.
Can you share case studies or references from clients in similar industries?
As a cyber risk services provider, we offer use cases across all security areas for clients in any industry. Due to confidentiality, we do not disclose client names; however, references can be provided upon special request.
What is your approach to measuring success, and how do you ensure our security improves after each engagement?
Remediation testing to validate that vulnerabilities have been patched
Continuous testing to create a baseline
Building and maintaining a strong CTEM program (Continuous Threat Exposure Management)
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